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JEAN PAUL RICHTER 

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LONDON : 
A. W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT. 

1859. 



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THE CAMPANER THAL; 

OR, 

DISCOURSES ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

EY JEAN EAUL FE. EICHTEE. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, BT JULIETTE GOWA. 



Seconu ffiuitton, £eftfse» anC (ffiomcteU. 



" — — Report also, we regret to say, is all that we know of the Campaner Thai, one of 
Richter's beloved topics, or rather the life of his whole philosophy ; glimpses of which look 
forth on us from almost every one of his writings. He died while engaged, under recent and 
almost total blindness, in enlarging and remodelling this Campaner Thai. The unfinished 
manuscript was borne upon his coffin to the burial vault ; and Klopstook's hymn, ' Aufer- 
stehen wirst du ! ' ' Thou shalt arise, my soul,' can seldom have been sung with more appro- 
priate application than over the grave of Jean Paul."— Carlyle's Miscellanies. 



Frice 4s. 6d. 



LONDON : 
A. W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOFSGATE WITHOUT, 



PREFACE. 



The object of this little volume, is to present the English 

reader with a picture of the great German author, Jean 

Paul. To effect this, the writer has interwoven a short 

biographical sketch, with such selections from his works, 

as seemed most characteristic of the mind that gave them 

birth, or eminently conspicuous for their truth and beauty. 

The life of Eichter has already appeared in English, and 

Carlyle has made the name of Jean Paul familiar in this 

country, by his masterly critical essays; still, except by 

name, he is very little known, and his works are far too 

un-English and peculiar, for them ever as a whole, to become 

popular among Anglo-Saxon readers. The writer of this 

sketch has endeavoured, by briefly glancing at the main 

features in his biography, to connect them with the portions 

of his works translated. Parenthetical essays, called by 

Eichter " Extra Leaves," and short aphorisms have been 

principally selected, as it is in these, it appears to the 

translator, that the genius of Richter more especially 

displays itself. In the " Essay on Charlotte Corday," 

and in that " On the Death of the Young," Eichter 

expresses sentiments in which the writer does not concur ; 

but in neither case does he think their fervid eloquence 

was intended as incense to the Moloch, war, but rather 

as a tribute to that abnegation of self, which constitutes 

the basis of all true heroism. In the " Repeated Promise 

of Amendment," we have an instance of what very 

frequently occurs in his writings; a simple narrative is 

made the groundwork for the most elaborate description, 

enriched by copious illustration and gorgeous imagery — a 



PREFACE. 

massive structure reared upon the slenderest foundation. 
The reason for introducing a paraphrase by De Qnincey, 
in place of a literal translation, was that the original 
is of too mystical a nature to present so sublime a picture 
of space to the reader, as the admirable composition 
referred to. "With this exception, and that of the "Dream 
of the Dead Christ," no piece translated in this little work 
has, as far as the writer can ascertain, ever before appeared 
in English. There is no author that requires more study 
and reflection than Jean Paul, and often that which at 
first appears mere high-sounding nonsense, is found to be 
deep comprehensive truth. If, from the intricacy of the 
sentences, or an insufficient acquaintance with the pecu- 
liarities of the German language, the translator has any- 
where misapprehended or perverted the meaning of 
Eichter, none will be more glad to see his error exposed 
and corrected, than himself. In conclusion, if the ten- 
dency of this little volume be to refine the feelings, to 
enlarge the understanding, to exalt and purify the imagi- 
nation, and to expand the heart ; and if it give to the reader 
a juster and grander conception of the sublime in man, 
the sublime in nature, and the sublime in Grod — it will not 
have been written in vain. 

THE AUTHOR. 



This volume has been principally compiled from the following 
sources : — 

Jean Paul's Sammtliche "Werke. 

"Wahrheit aus meinem Leben — Jean Paul. 

Biographie Jean Paul's von Ernst Forster. 

Carlyle's Essays, from one of which is taken the criticism on 
Eichter, quoted at the end of this volume, originally extracted from 
" German Romance," a work the writer has never seen. 

"Life of Eichter," published originally in Boston, and subse- 
quently in Chapman and Hall's Catholic Series. 

Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, translated by Noel. 



$flm $)anL 



It is a common remark in the present day, that 
great men are scarce ; and although this may be but 
partially true, yet as a rule, it is undoubtedly correct. 
This paucity of genius in the present age, is the more 
striking when contrasted with the galaxy of talent 
which graced the generation immediately preceding 
it. The civil commotions, wars, and revolutions, 
which shook kingdoms to their foundations, over- 
turned monarchies, and freed nations that had been 
groaning under despotism for hundreds of years, 
seemed but gently to rock the cradle of the muses, 
to arouse nature from her lethargy, and to bring 
forth men, who were to instruct, adorn, dazzle, 
and enlighten, not only the period that gave them 
birth, but all succeeding ages. Germany, more es- 
pecially in the time of her greatest national degra- 
dation and misery, was to take up a position in the 
literary world, to which she had never before aspired. 
The language in which Luther taught and wrote, 
was before this time held in but very low esteem, 
and whilst French was spoken in every court in 
Europe, German was scarcely understood at its own. 
It was reserved for Schiller, Goethe, and their con- 

B 



O JEAN PAUL. 

temporaries, to raise the literature of their country 
from its then ignoble position, and to bring out and 
develop the resources of their long neglected mother 
tongue. 

Among the mighty spirits of this age, none stands 
more conspicuous for depth of thought, beauty of 
expression, richness of diction and grandeur of ima- 
gination, though veiled in a very difficult and original 
style, than he whose life and writings we would fain 
portray ; he who has been termed by his admiring coun- 
trymen, Jean Paul der Einzige — Jean Paul the only. 

In the heart of Germany, at the North of Bavaria, 
is situated a table-land, which takes its name from 
the pine forests with which it is clad, the Fichtelge- 
birge. Here in the spring of 1763, in the midst of 
this isolated mountain region, was born Johann Paul 
Friedrich Eichter. His pedigree was not long, nor 
his ancestors noble ; his mother was the daughter of 
a cloth weaver of Hof, whilst his paternal grand- 
father was a schoolmaster and under-curate ; as he 
himself says, in the highest degree poor and pious. 

His father for some time occupied the same posi- 
tion ; but in consequence of a slight preferment, he 
removed to Eegensburg, and subsequently to Won- 
siedel, where he settled, and our poet was born. The 
youthful Eichter' s path lay not through the flowery 
meadows of luxury, which so often engender sloth, 
even in great minds ; — he had to climb the steep 
hill of adversity, with the sharp blasts of poverty in 
his face. His father was kind but severe, and his 
plan of education was very peculiar. He on one occa- 
sion, when our poet was between eight and nine years 



JEAN PAUL. 7 

old, brought him a Latin Dictionary to learn off by 
heart, but upon the repeated mispronunciation of the 
word " lingua" he took it away, much to the morti- 
fication and chagrin of the youthful student. In the 
little village of Joditz, to which the elder Bichter 
subsequently removed, the "happy days of childhood," 
which left such an indelible impression on the mind 
of our author, were spent, and here he formed those 
simple tastes, and that ardent attachment to his 
native mountain home, which never deserted him 
through life. 

In his autobiography occurs the following de- 
scription of a winter evening in the little parsonage 
of Joditz. " In the long twilight, the father paced 
to and fro, and the children trotted after him, creep- 
ing under his dressing-gown, and clinging if possible 
to his hands. At the sound of the vesper-bell, we 
placed ourselves in a circle, and devoutly chanted 
the hymn." * Die finstre Nacht bricht stark herein.' 
" In villages only, for in towns there is more night 
than day work, have the evening bells a genuine 
significance, and are indeed the swan song of the day ; 
the evening bell is, as it were, a muffle to the overloud 
heart, and like a Ranz des Yaches of the plains, calls 
man from labour and turmoil to the land of stillness 
and of dreams." 

It was with the utmost difficulty that the poor 
parish priest contrived to make his meagre income 
meet the requirements of his young family, and 
many were the excursions which young Fritz 
had to take to his grandmother, in Hof, who, for 
a merely nominal payment, often assisted in re- 

b2 



8 JEAN PAUL. 

plenishing the exhausted larder of the honest minister 
of Joditz. In the autumn, after the seven hours lessons, 
for the father was a rigid disciplinarian, the two boys, 
Paul and Adam, counted it one of their greatest 
pleasures to be permitted to accompany him into his 
little potato plot on the other side of the Saale, where 
they by turn assisted him in collecting the potatoes 
which he dug for the family supper, and gathered 
nuts from the hazel bushes by which the field was 
surrounded. Such were the simple joys which glad- 
dened Jean Paul's childhood, and to which he con- 
stantly recurs with ever increasing fondness. Through 
the patronage of Frau von Plotho, the exertions of 
the disinterested and indigent minister were re- 
warded by his being made pastor to the market-town 
of Schwarzenbach. Thus in each of his removals he 
followed the course of the Saale. 

Insignificant as this offspring of the pine clad sum- 
mits of Central Europe must appear, to those who only 
know it on the map — to those who, as we, have seen it 
either in summer when it winds like a silver thread 
through the dark foliage of the Fichtelgebirge, or 
when the autumn rains have sufficiently filled its stony 
bed to permit it to bear upon its bosom the timber 
rafts, which, having been cut down and constructed in 
this little mountain island, are carried by its current 
into the Elbe and the ocean ; or in winter, when it 
noiselessly glides under its hard, bright, covering of 
ice, or in spring when the snows having dissolved on 
the surrounding hills, swelling the little brooks, its 
tributaries, it bursts the icy manacles in which it has 
lain fettered through the long winter months, and 



JEAN PAUL. 9 

comes boiling and bubbling along, bearing with it 
the debris of its prison-house ; — it will always be 
remembered as one of the most beautiful and 
picturesque of German rivers: and perhaps it was 
the murmur of this mountain stream, that first awaked 
the poetic nature that was lying dormant in the boy. 
Like the river too, so peaceful was his course through 
the mountain heights of childhood, whose gentle 
ripple seemed but a prelude to the storms and tem- 
pests of the great ocean of life towards which he was 
hurrying. During Paul's three years residence in 
Schwarzenbach, he devoted himself zealously to self 
improvement, and here he commenced copying in 
manuscript all works that attracted his attention, of 
which alone, before his 20th anniversary, he had 
collected a considerable library. When sixteen, he 
was transferred to the Gymnasium (public school), 
in Hof, where he remained for two years, during which 
time he was left, by the death of his father, the main- 
stay and support of his widowed mother and younger 
brothers and sisters. At eighteen, he entered the 
University of Leipzig, almost without funds, and his 
outward college life was a series of struggles with 
poverty, in which it required all his natural buoyancy 
and trustfulness, to prevent his succumbing to this 
dire foe. His inner life at this time is far more diffi- 
cult to describe. His friends' wish was that he should 
follow the profession of his father and grandfather, 
hence his studies were principally ethical. It must 
be remembered that the moral and religious world of 
Germany was suffering from the beginning of that 
revolution from which it is only now recovering, and 



10 



JEAN PAUL. 



whose effects have been scarcely less gigantic than 
those of the French, with which it was intimately 
connected. We of course refer to the progress of 
infidelity, which, in the form of rationalism, spread 
through the length and breadth of the land. It was 
not to be expected that the young student should 
escape the contagion of the disease, which had turned 
the heads of the wisest of his countrymen ; but his 
heart was too warm to permit him to be led away 
for long into the dreary mazes of scepticism, and his 
head was too clear not to perceive that the conclusions 
that resulted in atheism, were equally un philosophical 
with those that tended to the opposite extreme of 
superstition. Besides his theological and classical 
studies, he devoted considerable time to the acquire- 
ment of the French and English languages, in whose 
literatures he soon became deeply interested. Of 
Gallic Authors, Yoltaire and Rousseau were his 
favorites, whilst he speaks with great enthusiasm of 
Shakspeare, Pope and Swift, as the most excellent of 
Anglican writers. 

But whilst devoting himself with the utmost ardour 
to the cultivation of his intellect, those of his Leipzig 
letters that have been preserved, breathe the purest 
affection and most cordial sympathy for his mother, 
whose weak though amiable nature tended greatly 
to aggravate her trials. Paul too had his trials ; the 
remittances from Hof were like angels' visits, and 
often, notwithstanding his excessive frugality, he 
knew not where to procure food for his evening meal, 
or wood for his fire. It was not to be wondered at, 
under these circumstances, that he should wish to 



JEAN PAUL. 11 

adopt some plan by which to relieve himself from 
his pecuniary embarrassments, and to become a sup- 
port, instead of being a burden, to his bereaved 
parent. She in her letters strongly urges him as 
soon as possible to don the clerical frock, but this 
step was much against his tastes, and he constantly re- 
minds her of the cost of the license, which by both 
mother and son, was regarded as an almost insuperable 
obstacle. It was now that he thought of writing as a 
means of obtaining bread ; yes, gentle reader, frown if 
you will and scorn the man, who could write from such 
mean and sordid motives ; it matters little how you 
may be affected by the circumstance, but it is, and 
remains a fact, that our hero was poor, and that his 
first books were composed with the duns at the door, 
and want staring him in the face from every part of 
his little, half furnished room in the Peterstrasse. 
Singular in all things, the titles of his works were 
almost as singular as their contents and style. His 
first essay was entitled the " Praise of Folly," for 
which he in vain attempted to find a publisher ; he 
did not however permit himself to be discouraged by 
this ill- success, but set vigorously to work again, 
and in six months had completed his second effort, 
" Greenland Lawsuits." This he managed to dispose of 
for fifteen louis d'or. These two effusions of his pen 
consisted of satires on a variety of subjects, and are 
only interesting to us as his first essays, and also for 
the frank and fearless manner in which he espouses 
those principles of civil and religious liberty, that 
were always so dear to him, and from which he never 
swerved. Encouraged by the success of the first 



12 JEAN PAUL. 

volume of his "Greenland Lawsuits/' lie wrote a 
second, for which he'received 120 thalers, but by which 
we are afraid his publisher was a loser, for he could 
not be persuaded on any terms to take a third, which 
the fertile brain of Paul had soon produced. The 
following extract is from the second volume. " Like 
the caterpillar, man crawls for a while on the earth ; 
he is then received by it, in the wooden chrysalis, 
the coffin, where he rests throughout the winter; 
in the spring he breaks through the shell and rises 
out of the cold earth, with new and unsullied beauty." 
No wonder that when he went back to Hof for his 
vacation, not finding his book appreciated as he 
had expected, he should be greatly delighted by 
the enthusiastic admiration expressed for it by a 
young girl, his townswoman. Some letters passed 
between them of that peculiar description, yclept 
billet-doux, and matters went so far that he pre- 
sented her with a manuscript book of extracts from 
the latest authors, and she, him with a ring ; but it 
was a mushroom attachment, and we have reason to 
believe was broken off, without much regret by either 
party. About this time he gave up the queue and 
powder, which was then universally worn, as ex- 
pensive and useless, and also otherwise altered his 
dress to suit his convenience : he had meanwhile ex- 
changed his apartment in the Peterstrasse, for lodgings 
in a garden in the suburbs. A certain magister Grafen- 
heim had also his residence in this garden, and so indig- 
nant was he at meeting a person in his walks, who com- 
mitted the monstrous impropriety of wearing no queue 
and a bare throat, that he was the ultimate means of 



JEAN PAUL. 13 

driving his poorer neigbour back to bis town-lodgings. 
Here be continued to study and write, but as no one 
would buy bis writings, he at length found it necessary 
to lay down his pen, and, to avoid the pertinacity of 
his more pressing creditors, to secure an outside place 
on the night coach for Hof, where he arrived in the 
winter of 1784, at the age of twenty-one. Thus ended 
the college life of Kichter, not to him a time of extrava- 
gance and riot, as to many of our English youth ; 
not a life of gaiety, with duels, beer drinking, and 
torch processions, by which the German too often 
relieves the monotony of his studies, but a course of 
rough and severe, though for his spirit, healthful dis- 
cipline, a skirmishing ground on which the battle of 
life was begun by some hand-to-hand tussles with 
the gaunt giant, poverty. In one corner of the little 
trunk, the only luggage that he brought with him 
from Leipzig, was the manuscript of a second satire, 
which bore the extraordinary title of a " Selection 
from the devil's papers." It, like its predecessors, 
contained much that was excellent, but was even less 
successful ; as has been said, the public taste demanded 
pap and treacle, and not this fiery sort of curry. As 
specimens of its general style, we here give two 
thoughts taken from it. " This earth is but a little 
back alley in the city of God, — a dark closet full of 
confused and distorted pictures from a more beau- 
tiful world — the border of God's creation — an atmos- 
phere of vapours round a better sun — the numerator 
to an, as yet, invisible denominator — verily it is almost 
nothing." "To man is given the difficult double 
task of raising his soul heavenwards, and satisfying 

b3 



14 JEAN PAUL. 

his material wants, as the chamois climbs upwards 
as he feeds ; or of weaving his earthly into his future 
life, as the moon, though revolving round the earth, 
nevertheless journeys round the sun." 

It was during our hero's residence in Hof, in the 
maternal house, after his final departure from Leipzig, 
that he contracted the most enduring friendship of 
his life, a friendship which will bear comparison with 
any of which history, either sacred or profane, has given 
us an account. Christian Otto was the son of a 
Lutheran pastor of tolerably affluent circumstances, 
and proved himself to be at once a most kind and 
devoted friend and a patient and impartial critic to 
the young author. In the little room in his mother's 
house in Hof, in the midst of all kinds of domestic duties 
and disturbances, Bichter pursued a most unflinching 
course of study and writing ; six hours he devoted to 
actual transcribing, and his remaining time to composi- 
tion ; the latter was always with him an out-door em- 
ployment, and it is not surprising that the beautiful 
scenery through which he wandered, should have 
deeply affected so ardent a temperament. Notwith- 
standing his own actual want, Kichter contrived to 
spare a louis d'or for a still poorer friend, Herman, 
one of his schoolfellows, a youth of considerable 
scientific and literary acquirements, but whose sickly 
body was ill suited for a restless and ever active mind. 
His struggles too for existence at college had been 
as severe as those of his friend, but his constitution 
being different, his health at length gave way to the 
double attacks of his mind within and the world 
without ; the sword wore out its scabbard, and Bichter 



JEAN PAUL. 15 

had one friend the less. Paul's pecuniary difficulties 
were fortunately greatly lessened by the request of 
Adam von Oerthel (another of his college friends) 
that he would become tutor to his youngest brother. 
This offer he gladly accepted, but did not find it what 
he expected, as Herr von Oerthel the father, was 
narrow-minded, miserly, and cold-hearted, and his 
pupil had none of those endearing qualities that cha- 
racterised his brother. Still his position was bearable 
as long as his friend Adam was there to cheer and 
support him with kindness and sympathy, but at 
length he died, and then Bichter determined to 
return to his mother at Hof, not much the richer for 
his three years tutorship. He now consented to be- 
come teacher to the children of three of his friends 
and patrons in Schwarzenbach, and resided by turn 
with each. Into his employment he threw his 
whole soul, and his system of instruction may be 
justly called education ; he did not pile fact upon fact 
until the mind of the little possessor was wearied and 
disgusted, but he carefully led his pupils to think for 
themselves, and watched with anxious interest, the 
development of the powers of their minds, even keep- 
ing a manual of any sayings which evinced reflection 
on their part. In the spring of 1790, he com- 
menced his first great work, "The Invisible Lodge." 
Previous to this he had, as he himself says, been 
working in a vinegar manufactory, that is to say, 
his writings had been marked by a bitter satire, 
which was no part of his real nature. As soon as he 
had completed this experiment, he sent it to Moritz of 
Berlin, who was extremely delighted with it, and 



16 JEAN PAUL. 

offered the hitherto despised author thirty ducats for 
his manuscript. The same evening he received this 
unexpected and most welcome remittance, he walked 
by the light of the stars from Schwarzenbach to Hof, 
to the miserable little apartment so dear to him, as 
" home." There he found his careworn mother, 
though late, still sitting over her wheel, and he 
hesitated not a moment to empty his hard- won trea- 
sure into her lap. In the " Invisible Lodge," Richter 
has endeavoured to represent most of the friends of 
his youth ; he has also given us some portions of his 
biography, clothed in a poetic garb, together with 
many of his peculiar ideas on education. This romance 
was never finished ; in his preface to it, when pre- 
paring in his old age an edition of all his works for 
the press, he says, " The whole world's history is but 
an unfinished romance, on this side the grave we 
see the entanglements, on the other we shall see the 
unravellings." 

The plan of the story is, that its hero, Gustavus, 
is brought up until he is some ten years old in a cave 
underground, having intercourse only with his tutor 
(called by J. P. " the genius ") who teaches him as 
much as is compatible with his tender years, and who 
tells him that death is most desirable, for that then 
he will be admitted into a more beautiful and better 
world. 

"With this short introduction, we will translate the 
" Resurrection Scene," as it perhaps gives a better 
idea of this work than any other selection we could 
make. 

" Four priests stand in the vast cathedral of nature, 



JEAN TAUL. 17 

and worship on God's altars, the mountains : grey 
icy winter, with the snow white ephod ; autumn laden 
with harvests, that it lays on God's altars and that 
man may take ; the fiery youth summer, who works 
till nightfall that he may worship ; and lastly, child- 
like spring in his white adornment of blossoms, which 
he sprinkles before the great spirit, and in his worship 
all that hear him join. And assuredly for the chil- 
dren of men is the spring the most beautiful priest. 
This flower-clad worshipper was the first that the 
little Gustavus saw at the altar. Before sunrise on 
the first of June, the genius knelt down and prayed 
with upraised hands and dumb trembling lips, a 
prayer that embraced the whole future life of Gus- 
tavus. A flute from above toned forth a loving 
welcome, and the genius himself overcome said, i It 
calls us from earth to heaven, come with me, my Gus- 
tavus.' The little one trembled between joy and 
fear. The flute continues. They go together up the 
ladder — two anxious beating hearts throb wildly with 
anxiety and expectation ; the genius throws the door 
open by which the world had been shut out, and lifts 
his charge on to the earth with the blue sky above 
him. Now the great waves of the living sea burst 
over Gustavus ; breathless, and with eye and heart 
overcome with emotion, he views the immeasurable 
face of nature, and trembling draws closer to his genius. 
But when after the first entrancement he opens his 
heart to these streams, as he feels the thousand arms 
with which the great spirit of the universe draws 
him to itself, as he notices the green spring flowers, 
which he fears to crush to death with his light step, 



18 JEAN PAUL. 

as his eye directed upwards wanders through the 
expanse of heaven, the opening of infinitude, as he 
shudders lest the great masses of dark cloud from 
above should fall and overwhelm him, as he sees the 
mountains standing like new worlds on ours, as he 
finds himself surrounded by an infinite number of 
existences on all sides, birds, quadrupeds, insects, and 
the giant trees, that stretch their living arms towards 
him, as the morning wind fans his burning cheek, 
and seems to him like the mighty breath of an ap- 
proaching genius, and lastly, as his burdened vision 
follows the course of a butterfly, as it noiselessly wings 
its way from flower to flower, and finally settles on a 
leaf; the sky begins to redden, and throwing aside 
the fringe of night's dark mantle, there appears on 
the horizon, like a crown of God fallen from the 
throne of the Deity, the sun. Gustavus cries, * There 
stands God/ and with dazzled heart and eye, and the 
most fervent prayer his childish bosom can contain, 
throws himself upon the turf. Again, throw open 
thy eyes, thou dear one ; no longer is their gaze 
directed on the fiery lava orb, thou liest on thy 
mother's breast, and her heart within is thy sun 
and thy God. For the first time, behold the indes- 
cribably sacred mother's smile ; for the first time, hear 
the maternal voice ; for the two first to meet thee in 
paradise are thy parents. heavenly hour ! The 
sun shines, every dew-drop glistens with his rays, 
tears fall from the eyes of four mortals, who stand 
moved and happy on an earth — far distant from 
heaven. Oh destiny veiled in obscurity ! Will our 
death be like that of Gustavus ? Obscure fate, that 



JEAN PAUL. 19 

sits behind our earth, as were it a mask, and gives us a 
little time to be ; Oh, when death lays us low, and a 
great genius raises us from our narrow vault into 
heaven, when then our souls are overwhelmed by its 
glories and joys, wilt thou there also give us a well 
known bosom upon which to turn our newly awakened 
eye ? Oh fate, wilt thou there restore to us what we 
here can never forget ? No eye will be turned upon 
this page, that has not wept something here, that it 
hopes to find again there. Alas ! after this life full 
of death, will no well-known form meet us to whom 
we can say, welcome ? Man's destiny remains dumb 
behind the mask, his tear stands upon the grave, 
and the sun beams not into the tear ; but our loving 
heart dies not in immortality and before the presence 
of the Almighty it lives." 

Schiller, when in after life speaking of his " Rob- 
bers " says, that his greatest error lay in attempt- 
ing to depict men before he knew any, and this we 
think was the case with Jean Paul. 

In his "Invisible Lodge" he introduces us with 
the utmost freedom to noblemen, courtiers, and 
princes, when as yet his study of character had been 
restricted to the farmers and country parsons of his 
native district. After the publication of this work, 
Richter continued to reside in Schwarzenbach, faith- 
fully fulfilling the duties of tutor to his young pupils, 
and occupying his leisure hours with the preparation 
of his Hesperus. He at this time kept a kind of 
"Book of Devotion," in which he put down the 
most rigid rules for his every day life, and what a life 
it was ! It does one good in the dreary annals of self- 



20 JEAN PAUL. 

ishness, which, make up the sum of the world's history, 
here and there to meet with, alas, at long intervals, 
the lives of such men, who make love and affection 
for their kind, the guiding principles of their conduct, 
and learn to find their happiness in the prosperity of 
their fellows. All who came to him for assistance 
and consolation, he, if possible, assisted and consoled, 
and by so doing, although it kept him on the verge of 
want, we doubt not he obtained more inward comfort 
and satisfaction, than if he had grown rich by follow- 
ing to the letter, the maxims of "Poor Richard's 
Almanack." He had a passionate love for nature, 
spending as much of his time as possible in long 
rambles, and no poet so nearly embodied " Beattie's 
Ideal," when he says : — 

" Lo ! where the stripling wrapt in wonder, roves 
Beneath the precipice, o'erhung with pine ; 
And sees on high amidst the encircling groves, 
From cliff to cliff the foaming torrent shine, 
While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, 
And echo swells the chorus to the skies. 

" And oft he traced the uplands to survey, 
When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn, 
The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray, 
And lake dim glea ming on the smoky lawn ; 
Far to the west, the long long vale withdrawn. 
And now he faintly kens the hounding fawn 
And villager abroad at early toil. 
But lo ! the sun appears, and heaven, earth and ocean 

smile. 
And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb, 
When all in mist the world below was lost." 



JEAN PAUL. 21 

We might make the quotation longer, but let this 
suffice. The Hesperus, the work by which Jean Paul 
is best known out of Germany, did not meet with the 
reception that the success of the " Invisible Lodge" 
had led him to expect, and for it he only received 200 
florins, £18. From it we make two selections : the 
one is part of an extra leaf on the " Wilderness and 
Promised Land of Mankind," which, after long and 
somewhat obscure remarks, he thus beautifully con- 
cludes. 

" A golden age will one day come, which already 
every wise and virtuous man enjoys, when individuals, 
but not peoples will sin, when man will not have 
more joy, but more virtue, when the people will take 
part in thinking, and the thinker in working, when 
military, as well as judicial murder will be universally 
condemned, and cannon-balls will be only seen when 
turned up by the plough. When this happy time 
shall arrive, our children's children will have ceased 
to be. We now stand in the evening and see the sun 
go down amid crimson clouds, that promise a peaceful, 
calm, sabbath for mankind, but our successors will 
have to wander through a stormy night, through a 
poisonous fog, till at last a pure, fresh, morning wind 
shall rise over a happier world and dispel the clouds. 
Centuries have been, where mankind, eye-bound, was 
led from one prison to another ; there can be no other 
centuries, but those in which individuals sink as 
peoples rise, when peoples fall, as humanity rises, and 
when the human race itself sinks, falls, and ends, 
when the globe dissolves. What then consoles us ? 
A veiled eye behind time, an infinite heart beyond 



22 



JEAN PAUL. 



the grave. There is a higher arrangement than we 
can show. There is a providence in the world's 
history as in each one's life, that the reason boldly 
rejects, and the heart boldly accepts. There must 
be a providence, which, by rules unknown to us, con- 
nects this earth as daughter-land to a higher city of 
Grod — there must be a Grod, a virtue, an eternity." 

The other is a portion of Emanuel's letter on God, 
which we will leave to speak for itself. 

" Oh, Julius, Julius, said I, the earth is great — but 
the heart that rests upon it is greater than the earth 
or sun, for it alone thinks the greatest thought. 
Suddenly a cool breeze rose where the sun had just 
set. The whole atmosphere was in motion, and a 
broad air-stream, in whose current the forests bowed 
their lofty tops, swept through the heavens. The 
altars of nature, the mountains, were overlaid with 
black mourning — we ourselves were enveloped in 
mist — the heavens were shut out from our view. At 
the foot of the black vault, played transparent 
lightnings, and the thunders rolled around its base. 
The storm rose and tore it to pieces ; it drove the 
floating remnants of its prison through the ether, and 
cast the huge masses of vapour below the horizon ; 
and long it continued to sweep over the plain. But 
behind the curtain that it tore away, there shone forth 
that most beautiful of all things, a star-bespangled sky. 
Like a sun, the greatest thought that man can think 
rose in my breast. My soul was overwhelmed when 
I gazed into the heavens, and it was exalted when I 
looked upon the earth. For the Eternal has inscribed 
His name in glittering stars in the sky, and has 
written it in gentle flowers on the earth. * * * 



JEAN PAUL. 23 

"We kneel here on this little earth before infinitude, 
before the immeasurable universe floating above us, 
before the radiant vault of space. Raise thy soul 
and understand what I say unto thee. Thou hearest 
the whirlwind that drives the clouds round the earth, 
but thou hearest not the whirlwind that drives the 
earth round the sun, nor the greatest whirlwind that 
bears the suns themselves, round a Hidden All. Step 
from the earth into the empty ether ; here rest awhile 
and see how it has shrunk to a flying mountain range, 
that, with six others, ever journeys round the sun ; 
mountains, with attendant little hills, rise and sink 
before thee in the sunlight — then, behold the round, 
flashing, lofty vaidt, built of suns, through which the 
eternal night, in which it stands, looks in. Thou 
mayest fly for thousands of years, yet wilt thou not 
stand upon the last sun, nor step out into the night 
beyond. Thou mayest shut thine eye and throw thy- 
self with the speed of thought over the abyss, and over 
the entire visible heaven, and when thou again openest 
it, rushing streams will cross thy path, of bright waves 
of suns, and dark drops of earths, and in the east and 
the west, will stand to thee unknown systems, and the 
fiery wheel of a new milky- way will revolve in the 
stream of time. Yes, when an all-powerful hand 
should lift thee quite beyond our heaven, and thou 
lookedst back, and fixedst thine eye on the sea of suns 
that gradually paled and dried up with distance, till at 
last creation hung as a faint still cloud, deep in the 
night, thou mightest then think thyself alone, and 
look around thee, and thou wouldest see as many 
suns and constellations blaze above, below, around, and 



24 



JEAN PAUL. 



the faint little cloud would hang still fainter among 
them ; and upon the whole dazzling empyrean would 
be countless, faint, small, clouds. 

" Oh, Julius, Julius, between the rushing hills of fire, 
between the milky-ways, hurled from one abyss to 
the other, there floats a small dust made of six thou- 
sand years and the human race. Oh ! Julius, who is 
it that looks upon and cares for that fluttering grain, 
made up of all our hearts ? The sea of worlds without 
shore or bottom, flows here, and ebbs there. The moth, 
the earth, hovers round and round the sunlight, and 
at last flies into it and is destroyed. Oh ! Julius, who 
regards and takes care of the fluttering dust on the 
moth, in the midst of an ever-changing chaos ? Oh ! 
Julius, when each moment sounds the death-knell of 
a man and a world ! when time extinguishes the 
planets like sparks, and crushes calcined suns to pow- 
der, when the constellations, like distant lightnings, 
pierce through the darkness, when one system of 
worlds after the other is drawn down into the abyss, 
and the everlasting grave is never full, and the ever- 
lasting heaven never empty ; Oh ! Julius, who re- 
gards and supports us poor beings of dust ? Thou all 
merciful One, Thou supportest us, Thou infinite One, 
Thou, Oh, God ! Thou formest us, Thou seest us, 
Thou lovest us. Oh ! Julius, raise thy spirit and 
listen to the greatest thought that man can think. 
Where eternity is, where immensity is, and where 
the night begins, an infinite Spirit stretches forth its 
arms, and lays them around the great falling universe, 
and bears it and warms it. I, and thou, and every 
man, and every angel, and every worm, rest on His 



JEAN PAUL. 25 

bosom, and the surging, boiling sea of suns, and 
worlds, is but a child in His arms. He looks through 
the sea, in which trees of coral full of worlds rest, and 
sees on the tiniest coral, the little worm which am I, 
and He gives to the worm the nearest drop and a 
blessed heart, and a future, and an eye that reaches 
up to Thee, yes, Oh, God! up to Thee, up to Thy heart. 

" Deeply moved, Julius said, with tears in his eyes, 
Thou seest, Oh Spirit of love, me also, poor blind boy ; 
come into my soul when I am alone, and the soft rain 
falls upon my cheek, and I feel an unutterable love. 
Oh ! Thou good, great, Spirit, assuredly I have already 
felt and loved Thee- 

" Emanuel, tell me yet more, tell me His thoughts 
and His beginning. Gfod is eternity — God is truth — 
God is holiness — He has nothing, He is everything — 
the whole heart compasses Him, but no thought. 

" Everything infinite and wonderful in man is His 
reflection ; but to penetrate further, seek not. Crea- 
tion hangs as a veil, woven of suns and spirits, over 
the infinite One, and eternities pass over the veil and 
draw it not aside from the glory which it hides." 

The firm conviction that this life is but the prepa- 
ration for the next, but the school to a higher, a holier, 
and a happier state of being, is well expressed in a few 
lines at the conclusion of one of his minor writings at 
this time. 

" Yes, truly, our earth is in the shade. But man is 
higher than his resting place ; he looks upwards and 
spreads out the wings of his soul, and when the sixty 
minutes that we call sixty years are over, he rises, and 
the ashes of his plumage fall away, and the soul, 



26 JEAN PAUL. 

without aught of the grossness of earth, and pure as 
a melody, ascends into heaven. But even here, in the 
midst of his dim, obscure life, he sees the mountain tops 
of the future world glow in the beams of a sun that 
does not rise here below. Thus the inhabitant of the 
North Pole, in the long winter night, during which the 
sun never rises, sees at mid-day, an Aurora that 
gilds the loftiest peaks around him, and he thinks of 
his long summer, when his sun will never set." 

" Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" was his next 
great work. It is principally a description of the 
struggles with poverty of Siebenkas, the Poors' advo- 
cate, a theme on which he was quite at home, and 
could write volumes. In it occurs the remarkable 
dream of the " Dead Christ," a composition so con- 
spicuous for its boldness and originality, that it was 
deemed worthy of translation, and insertion in Madame 
de Stael's " Allemagne." It was when under the in- 
fluence of phantasieren on the piano, an exercise of 
which he was excessively fond, that Jean Paul com- 
posed his dreams,* a kind of writing in which he 
succeeded, perhaps better than in any other. 

We here attempt the following translation of 
this grand and striking dream. 



* If my heart were so miserable, that every feeling that 
pointed to the existence of a God were destroyed, I would 
terrify myself with this my essay, and it would cure me and 
give me back my feelings. 

Note oe the Translator. — Before seeing this dream in the 
original, we had read the excellent translations of Messrs. 
Carlyle and Noel, and though we have not intentionally copied 



JEAN PAUL. 27 

" The object of this conception must serve as the 
apology for its boldness. Some men deny the exis- 
tence of God, with as little feeling as most of us 
grant it. Even in our true systems, we collect but 
words, counters, and medals, like avaricious anti- 
quaries, and not till long afterwards, do we exchange 
the words for feelings, the coins for enjoyments, 
One may for twenty years believe in the immortality 
of the soul, and only in the twenty-first, in some 
great moment, awake to full consciousness of the 
glorious character of this belief, of the warmth of 
this naptha spring. Even so was I terrified by the 
poisonous fog that envelopes him, who for the first time 
enters the atheistic seminary. I could with less pain 
deny immortality than the deity ; in the one case I 
lose only a world hidden by clouds, in the other I 
lose this present world, that is to say its sun. The 
whole spiritual universe is burst and shattered by 
the hand of atheism, into countless separate exist- 
ences, that run and wander together, into and out of 
one another, without unity or permanency. None is 
so utterly alone in the universe, as the denier of God ; 
with an orphaned heart, that has lost the greatest 
of fathers, he mourns upon the immeasurable corpse 
of nature, that no master spirit governs and sustains, 
but that grows in its grave, and he mourns until 
he himself crumbles away from the huge corpse beside 
him. The whole world lies before him, like the great 



from either, we Lave doubtless imbibed a good deal of the 
spirit of their versions, and should therefore wish respectfully 
to acknowledge our obligation. 



28 JEAN PAUL. 

half- in- sand-imbedded sphinx, and the universe is 
the cold iron mask of a shapeless eternity. It is also 
my object in this composition to inspire with dread 
those deeply read professors, who, since they like day 
labourers, have worked in the water-works and 
mines of critical philosophy, discuss the being of a 
Grod, as coolly and cold heartedly as if it were merely 
a question as to the existence of the kraken or the 
unicorn. For others who are not so far advanced 
as these learned professors, I will merely remark, 
that it is quite possible to unite the belief in Atheism 
with that in immortality ; for the same necessity that 
cast my bright dew-drop of being in a flower calyx 
and under a sun, can in the second, recreate it ; 
indeed, a second embodiment is easier than a first. 

" When we are told in childhood, that the dead at 
midnight, when our sleep reaches near unto the soul 
and even darkens our dreams, rise from their slum- 
bers, and mimic the service of the living in the 
churches, we shudder at death, because of the dead, 
and in the stillness and solitude of night, turn away 
our gaze from the long windows of the silent 'church, 
afraid to ask ourselves whether their glitter is caused 
by the moonlight, or not. Childhood's terrors even 
more than its raptures in dreams again take wing, 
and play like glow-worms in the little night of the 
soul. Quench not these little fluttering sparks ! 
Leave us even our dark, painful, dreams as half 
shadows of reality. And what could compensate us 
for our dreams, which bear us away from under the 
roar of the waterfall into childhood's smooth table- 
land, where the stream of life glides silently, and 
like a mirror of heaven towards its precipices. 



JEAN PAUL. 29 

" One summer's evening I lay me down on a moun- 
tain side and slept, and dreamed that I awoke in 
a church-yard. The tower-clock was striking eleven. 
I sought the sun in the void night heaven, as I 
thought it was hidden by an eclipse. All the graves 
were unclosed, and the iron doors of the charnel 
house were opened and shut by invisible hands. On 
the walls were shadows that no one threw, and other 
shadows stalked upright in mid air. In the open 
coffins none now slept, but the children. In the sky 
there hung a grey sultry fog, that a giant shadow 
like a net drew ever nearer, and closer, and hotter. 
Above me I heard the distant roar of avalanches ; 
under me the first shock of an immeasurable earth- 
quake. The church swayed to and fro, torn by two 
ceaseless discords, that strove in vain to unite in 
harmony. Now and again a gray glimmer ran along 
the windows, and the lead and iron fell down molten ; 
the net of fog and the heaving earth, drove me 
towards the temple, at whose entrance, in two poi- 
sonous nests, brooded two basilisks. I passed through 
unknown shadows, on whom centuries long passed 
away were impressed. All the shadows were grouped 
round the altar, and in each the breast heaved and 
throbbed in place of a heart. One corpse that had 
but just been buried in the church, lay still upon his 
pillow, and his smiling features betrayed the presence 
of a happy dream. But as a living man entered he 
awoke and smiled no longer ; he unclosed with pain 
his tightly sealed eyelid, but within there was no eye, 
and instead of a heart, there was a wound in his 
beating breast. He raised his hands and folded 



30 JEAN PAUL. 

them to pray, but the arms lengthened out, and the 
clasped hands fell away from his body. Above, on the 
roof of the church stood the dial plate of eternity, 
that bore no figure, and was its own index ; only one 
black finger pointed to it, and the dead sought to 
read the time on it. At this moment there sank 
upon the altar a lofty noble form, having the ex- 
pression of a never-ending sorrow, and all the dead 
cried ' Christ, is there no God ? ' He answered 
1 There is none.' Now, not only the breasts of the 
dead, but every limb quivered, and one by one 
melted away. Christ continued — I traversed the 
worlds, I ascended into the suns, and flew with 
the constellations through the wildernesses of the 
heavens — but there is no God. I ascended as far as 
being throws its shadow, and gazed into the abyss 
beyond, and cried c Father, where art thou ? ' but 
I only heard the everlasting storm, that no power 
governs, and the great rainbow of existence stood, 
without the sun that formed it, over the abyss, and 
fell by drops into it. And, as I gazed upwards, into 
the immeasurable universe for the divine eye, I saw 
nothing but the empty bottomless eye-socket, and 
eternity lay upon chaos, and gnawed it and ruminated 
it. Shriek on, ye discords, rend the shadows with 
your cries, for He is not. The shadows dissolved 
like hoar frost at the approach of the warm breath, 
and all was void. Then came into the church — 
terrible for the heart to behold — the dead children, 
who were now awaked in the graveyard, and threw 
themselves before the lofty form at the altar, and 
said ' Jesus, have we no father ? ' And he answered. 



JEAN PAUL. 31 

with streaming eyes, ' We are all orphans, I and 
you, we are without a father.' 

" Thereupon the discords shrieked more fiercely, the 
quivering walls of the temple fell asunder, and the 
temple and the children sank down, and the earth 
and the sun followed, and the whole structure of 
worlds sank after them in its infinitude ; and above — 
on the summit of infinite nature, stood Christ — and 
looked into the universe, traversed by a thousand 
suns, as into a mine dug out of the everlasting night, 
in which the suns are the miners' lamps, and the 
milky ways the veins of silver. And as Christ 
saw the crushing confluence of worlds, the torch 
dance of celestial meteors, and the coral bank of 
beating hearts, and when he beheld how one orb 
after another emptied out her gleaming souls into the 
sea of death, as a fire-ball strews floating lights on 
the waves — sublime as the loftiest finite being, he 
lifted up his eyes to the nothingness and to the im- 
measurable void and said, ' Empty void nothingness, 
cold eternal necessity ! Insane chance ! Know ye 
what is beneath you ? When will you destroy the 
building and me ? Chance, knowest thou thyself, 
when with hurricanes thou sweepest through the 
starry firmament and extinguishest sun after sun, and 
when the sparkling dew of stars twinkles its last as 
thou passest by ! How lonely is every one in the wide 
charnel of the universe ! I am alone by myself. Oh, 
Father ! Oh, Father ! where is thine infinite bosom, 
whereon I may rest ; alas, if every being be its own 
father and creator, why can it not also be its own 
destroying angel ? Is that a man near me ? Thou 

c2 



32 JEAN PAUL. 

poor one ! Your little life is the sigh, of nature, or 
only its echo. A concave mirror throws its rays on the 
dust clouds, the ashes of the dead upon your earth, and 
thus yon cloudy tottering images are formed. Look 
down into the abyss, over which clouds of ashes float. 
Mists, full of worlds, arise from the sea of death. 
The future is a rising vapour, the present a falling 
one/ Here, Christ looked down and his eyes filled 
with tears, and he said, ' Ah, I too was once upon it, 
then I was happy, for I had still my infinite Father, 
and gazed joyfully from the hills to the immeasurable 
expanse of heaven, and pressed my pierced breast on 
his healing image, and cried, even in my cruel death, 
Father, take thy Son out of his bleeding frame, and 
lift him up to thy heart. Ah, ye too, too happy 
dwellers of earth, ye still believe in him. Perhaps 
at this moment your sun is setting, and ye fall amid 
blossoms, radiance and tears, and clasp your blessed 
hands and cry amid a thousand tears of joy. Thou 
knowest me too, thou Eternal one, and all my wounds, 
and wilt receive me after death and close them all. 
Unhappy ones, after death, they will not be closed. 
When the man of sorrows lays himself with sore 
wounded back in the earth, to slumber towards a 
lovelier morning full of truth, full of virtue and of joy, 
he awakes in the tempestuous chaos, in the everlast- 
ing midnight, and no morning cometh, and no heal- 
ing hand, and no infinite father. Mortal, who art 
near me, if thou still livest, worship him, else thou 
hast lost him for ever.' And as I fell down and 
gazed into the gleaming fabric of worlds, I saw the 
raised rings of the giant serpent of eternity, that lay 



JEAN PAUL. 33 

coiled around the universe, and she encircled it 
doubly and wound herself thousandfold around nature, 
and crushed the worlds together, and grinding them, 
squeezed the infinite temple of God's universe into one 
vast grave ; and everything became confined, gloomy, 
and terrible, and an immeasurable out-stretched bell- 
hammer was about to strike the last hour of time, 
and split creation asunder — when I awoke. My 
soul wept for joy that it could again worship God, 
and the joy and the tears and the belief in Him were 
the prayer. And when I rose, the sun gleamed 
brightly from behind the full golden ears of corn, 
and peacefully threw the reflection of his evening 
glory round the little moon, that was rising in the 
east without an aurora; and between heaven and 
earth, a glad fleeting world stretched out its wings, 
and lived like me in the presence of the infinite 
Father, and from all nature around me, there arose 
peaceful tones as from distant evening bells." 

Shortly after the publication of Siebenkas, at the 
earnest request of his literary friends, who had 
learned to know and love him in his writings, Richter 
visited Weimar. To this place the great names of 
Goethe and Schiller had attracted a literary coterie 
of almost all the great Germans of the age, and here 
they endeavoured in each others' intercourse and 
society to find consolation for the national extinction 
of their country that was apparently impending. By 
these distinguished men, Jean Paul was received and 
welcomed as one of themselves. He visited Schiller, 
Goethe, Wieland and Herder, the last of whom had 
long been the object of his sincerest admiration, and 



34 JEAN PAUL. 

the two authors now formed a friendship that lasted 
till death. But although in Herder he was not dis- 
appointed, yet from one of his subsequent letters we 
clearly see that he now lost much of the reverence 
which he had previously entertained, for those who 
stood at the summit of the German Parnassus. He 
thus writes after two weeks spent in the society of 
the most famous philosophers and poets of the age. 
" "What Jean Paul gains, humanity loses in his eyes. 
Alas ! for my ideal of great men ! I soon threw 
away my prejudices for great authors. They are like 
other people. Here every one knows that they are like 
the earth, that looks from a distance from Heaven, 
like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it, it 
is found to be made of mud." Not long after this 
visit his mother died, and thus the last tie that bound 
him to Hof was severed. Nevertheless he did not 
leave this city, to which long residence had made 
him much attached, without regret, more especially 
as his friend Otto still continued to reside there. He 
first went to Leipzig, and thence after a short stay 
to Weimar, where he zealously prosecuted his writ- 
ings, for which he now no longer had any difficulty 
in finding a publisher. It was under the kindly in- 
fluence of his intercourse with his Weimar friends, 
who could understand and appreciate him, that he 
finished the first volume of the Titan, the work which 
Germans consider his masterpiece. Here also he 
penned an essay on Charlotte Corday, from which we 
translate the following copious extracts : — 

" Her life was a fit precursor of her death. The 
Greeks and Romans and the great authors of her own 



JEAN PAUL. 35 

time had made her a republican before the republic. 
She was bold even in her religious belief. When asked 
at the revolutionary tribunal if she had a confessor, she 
replied, 'None/ * * * From this we clearly 
see that it was no religious fanaticism that consecrated 
the sword of this virgin destroying angel. Spite of 
all the fire of her inner being, and all the charms of 
her person, she was a stranger to love, and esteemed 
men but little ; because the soul of a woman seeks a 
higher being, and her sublime spirit could not even 
find its equal. When the president with wonted 
brutality asked her a question that touched her honor, 
she calmly replied, ' I neither met with nor knew a 
man that was worthy of me, for Marat still lived/ 
Woman's province seemed to her, narrow, limited, 
and confined. ' Republican Frenchmen,' she wrote 
to Barbaroux, ' cannot understand how a woman 
whose life at its longest stretch is but of little use, 
should calmly sacrifice it to the fatherland.' * * 

" When even ordinary women live more in the ideal 
than we, inasmuch as they think more with the heart, 
we more with the head, and endeavour therefore by 
the vividness of an imaginary to compensate for the 
narrowness of their real life, it is still more the 
case with women of a finer mould, in whom their 
loftier intellect obeys their finer feeling, not as with 
us, governs it, and whose misfortune is therefore 
commonly as great as their worth. 

" Charlotte Corday, living in an age of liberty, and 
at a time when her fatherland rose and loudly de- 
manded its emancipation, was inspired and inflamed 
by the spring month of returning freedom to the 



36 JEAN PAUL. 

world. Her long hidden sacred fire burst forth with 
the universal enthusiasm, and the cherished ideals of 
her heart now became living realities, and seemed to 
point out her future course, her whole being kindling 
into action. This Corday lived to see the ' Mountain/ 
She lived to see on the 31st of May, the destruction 
of her fondest hopes, when liberty was compelled 
either to flee or die, when revolution followed revo- 
lution, and the state became a sea, in which the 
inhabitants did nought but prey upon and devour 
one another ; when in the giant liberty nought re- 
mained sound and intact but the bloody fang, and 
Corday herself said, ' I am weary of living amid a 
fallen and degraded people.' She lived to see a 
Marat, that mean hypocritical, haughty, physically 
and morally detestable being, who drunken with 
blood, far more resembled a skulking vampire, than a 
lordly beast of prey. He hired, paid, and praised 
the assassins of September, yet slew not a man with 
his own hand, but only himself by his vices ; who 
wished with the blood of 250,000 citizens, to water 
and nourish the young vine of liberty ; who himself 
desired a dictator, showing how extremes meet, and 
who (according to Corday) was organizing by means 
of bribery a civil war. Yet two days before his death, 
he was spoken of in the convention as a French Cato, 
an immortal lawgiver and friend of the people ; he for 
whose destroying angel new tortures were demanded, 
was unanimously declared an ornament of Pantheon, 
and in Corday's last night, was entombed amid long 
processions and the roar of cannon. 

" ' Let us turn away/ said the Count, ' from this 



JEAN PAUL. 37 

loathsome animal, and refresh our vision by the con- 
templation of the noble heroine, who spurned the reptile 
with her foot, as she entered the triumphal archway 
of immortality." In Caen, a force of 60,000 men had 
been organized against the anarchy reigning in the 
capital. Corday, convinced that this great expedition 
was in reality directed against but one man, he who 
for four years had been the firebrand and assassin of 
France — Marat — thought joyfully to herself (as she 
subsequently said) 'You seek but one man, I can 
spare your blood by the shedding of mine and his 
alone/ She looked upon herself as a volunteer of 
the department of Calvados, therefore as a soldier 
against the states' enemy, not as the avenging Nemesis 
of a ruler. On the 2nd of June, the determination 
to die appeared like the angel to the apostle in prison. 
And as she saw so many youths journeying to Paris, 
in the hopes of liberty, but only there to find a grave, 
she gave her hand to the angel that was to lead her 
out of this life. ' Oh, could we but look deeper into 
her soul at this moment,' said the Count, ' When 
she said, my life is now over ; every cheerful prospect 
is closed to me. All that I have loved and hoped 
must be given up. Father, friends, children, earthly 
future, and everything that constitutes the happiness 
of those around me. Give me the funeral torch, in- 
stead of the bridal lamp, and let death's cold hand 
press his black seal upon my budding life.' It is 
well known that for a whole month after this, she 
kept her heroic purpose locked in her bosom. But 
how frivolous and small must have appeared to her 
at this time the cares and sorrows of life, how free 

c3 



38 JEAN PAUL. 

her heart, how pure each virtue, how clear each view. 
She now stands on the loftiest mountain's summit, 
and sees the thunder clouds come from below — not 
from above, and while those in the valley beneath 
anxiously watch the cloud and await the thunder 
clap, she feels herself neither shadowed by its vapour 
nor wet by its fall. By the lofty position of noble 
warrior, zealous" republican, and God-inspired being, 
she considers herself amply compensated for the 
sacrifice of all domestic joys. On the 7th July, she 
started for Paris, after having written to her father, to 
prevent misunderstanding and paternal anxiety, that 
alarmed at the prospect of civil war, she had fled into 
England. Silent, without a sympathising or supporting 
friend, the girl of twenty-five parted from all those 
whom she loved, and in the warmest of life's seasons 
began the long journey to the altar, where she was to 
bleed. ' I found myself/ she wrote to Barbaroux, ' in 
the diligence, with honest mountaineers, who conversed 
at their ease ; their talk, which was as foolish as their 
exterior was unattractive, did not a little to send me 
to sleep, from which I hardly awoke till I arrived in 
Paris.' With the same calm composure, with the 
same cool clear vision, she took the first, as she did 
the last step to the scaffold. The hero feels himself 
supported and inspired by the band he leads, and 
who surround him. This heroine went alone, with 
her own heart, and an invisible sword to the place 
of execution. She knew well that in Marat's 
dagger she bore freedom's sceptre, and rode 
although unseen by the blind populace (on her enter- 
ing into Paris) in her car of triumph, and already 



JEAN PAUL. 39 

arrayed in the robes of a splendid futurity. Tran- 
quility, calmness and coolness must have come to her 
spirit, in the firm belief that she, she alone, by her 
death would prevent a civil war and a civil massacre, 
and win more for her bleeding fatherland than a 
battle. Oh, happy, happy is he for whom Gfod has 
provided some great idea, for which alone he lives 
and labours, that he values more than his joys, that 
ever young and fresh, hides from him the wearying 
monotony of life. ****** 

"Thursday, the 11th of July, Charlotte Corday came 
to Paris, as to the place of execution of her father- 
land, of her former inner life, and of her present 
outer one, like to the still white moon, rising ap- 
parently out of the hot hollow crater, as at Naples 
from Yesuvius. She went first to Duperret (an 
already proscribed Girondist, who was subsequently 
executed) handed him a letter from Barbaroux, and 
requested him to conduct her to the Minister of the 
Interior, of whom she wished to demand some papers 
for a friend. He excused himself to her, but promised 
to see and accompany her the following morning. 
On his return to his guests, he told them how striking 
and extraordinary the whole manner and bearing of 
the maiden had seemed to him. On Friday morning 
she sent a note to Marat, requesting an interview, 
alleging as her motive, republican secrets ; she came 
herself in an hour, but in vain. This was in reality 
a second failure, for she had originally intended to 
have sacrificed him and consequently herself in the 
midst of the convention. Such trifling obstacles 
as the long journey, and hot weather, would have 



40 JEAN PAUL. 

extinguished the flame, which for a single evening, 
might have blazed with similar ardour in the breast 
of some impulsive fanatic. Corday remained body 
and soul, calm and firm. At length the honest 
Duperret came, her much-wished-for visit to the 
minister had been rendered useless ; she found 
Duperret staunch, but reserved, and she there- 
fore only earnestly begged him to withdraw himself 
from the convention, and to retire to Caen, where he 
would be of more use. As on the day of Marat's 
death, he wished to return her visit, she would not 
see him, not wishing to involve any one in her ruin. 
The lofty alpine rose had but one sharp thorn against 
but one man. On the evening of Friday, she wrote 
to Marat, and urged him more pressingly to see her 
on the morrow. Saturday came ; not till now did 
she buy her dagger in the Palais Royal, and hide 
these scissors of Atropos in her bosom. Upon this 
she repaired to Marat, with the double certainty 
that he would die by her hands, she by those of 
the populace. Though ill from his excesses and in 
his bath, he admitted her. She named to him freely 
all the enthusiastic Girondists of Caen and Evreux, 
who had conspired against the ' Mountain/ that is, all 
her own most intimate friends. ' Yery well/ said he, 
' in a few days I will have them all guillotined in 
Paris.' Suddenly the Nemesis assumed the form of 
Charlotte Corday, and turning the butcher knife of 
Marat against his own heart, thus ended his infamous 
life. But a gentle verdict will be passed by God and 
man on the hitherto stainless hand, that a higher spirit 
plunged into this foul blood. ' This judgment will be 



JEAN PAUL. 41 

given/ said the Count. ' Pure as the thunder cloud 
she once flashed forth lightning on the muddy earth, 
and then drew back into her native heaven. But 
how wonderfully did fate with the bath, and the 
last blood-thirsty words, point out the time and the 
spot for revenge. By similar chains of accidents, 
almost all villains have fallen. The Nemesis stands 
over the world with its avenging dart, beneath 
kneel the bad, with their eyes bound, and their breast 
reveals a black heart showing a fatal mark.' Calmly 
and withoLit attempting flight, she permitted herself 
to be made prisoner. When the postmaster Drouet 
drove with her to the c Abbaye/ and by reminding 
the people, who would have torn her in pieces, of the 
law, brought them to obedience, she fainted. When 
consciousness returned, she was much surprised, that 
the mob, whom she looked upon as an assemblage of 
savages, should have left her alive, and should have 
obeyed the law. The weeping of the women pained 
her deeply, but she added, ' Having saved the father- 
land, what it costs matters little.' 

" The sheath of the dagger, a little money, her 
baptismal register, and passport, a gold watch, and an 
' address to the people ' were found upon her. At the 
entrance of the Abbaye, a youth threw himself before 
her guards, with a request, that he might receive 
imprisonment and death in her stead : he suffered 
both, without saving her. Who drops a tear upon 
the dead, dies quickly after, says superstition ; thus 
under despotism, the tear shed over the innocent 
victim kills. The whole night long the enthusiastic 
maiden spoke of the means of saving the republic. 



42 JEAN PAUL. 

* I have done my part/ she said (according to Drouet) 
1 others must do the rest.' At this time the noble 
Mainzer Adam Lux, heard of her, as an aristocrat 
and fanatic, but soon after one brave heart looked 
into a second, he met her on her triumph and funeral 
chariot on her way to the guillotine, and afterwards 
mounted it himself on the 10 th of October, because 
he had written in defence of her and of freedom. * * 

" And let no German forget him ! But is not every- 
thing past, eclipsed and forgotten in the by-rushing 
present ? What lofty forms rose out of the impure 
stream and glittered awhile and sank, as water-plants 
rise to the surface to blossom, and then sink again 
laden with fruit. *#*#** 

" The third day of her imprisonment, (which Corday 
calls the second after her active preparation for her 
inner peace) she wrote the memorable letters to her 
father and Barbaroux. The opinion expressed in 
them on the dead Marat, possessed all its old severity, 
untouched by soft-heartedness for the dead. To the 
question of the revolutionary tribunal : 'how she could 
consider him a monster, when he had given her admis- 
sion on the receipt of a written complaint ?' she re- 
plied ; ' What was there in his being humane towards 
one and a savage to all besides ?' In her second letter to 
her father, she asked forgiveness for her self-sacrifice 
and said, ' rejoice that you have given life to a daughter 
who knows how to die. Let none of my friends weep 
for me. Their tears would stain my memory, and I 
die happy/ Her letter to Barbaroux she ended with 
these words : — ' To-morrow, at five o'clock, my trial 
commences, and the same day I hope to be in Ely- 



JEAN PAUL. 43 

siurn. with Brutus and others of the ancients ; for as to 
the moderns, I care not for them, they are so bad/ 
On "Wednesday, the 17th, she stood before the revolu- 
tionary tribunal. What she there said, would, from 
another mouth, sound sublime ; but he who once 
attains to greatness, shows involuntarily and without 
effort, his elevation ; he inhabits as it were, a table- 
land. If we wonder at the sharp and cutting answers 
this gentle creature gave to the sanguinary council 
before which she stood, we must remember that no 
noble man could have done less, who found himself in 
the presence of these blood-stained judges of so many 
innocent souls ; men, who like the king- snake, coil 
their rings to resemble a refreshing fountain, to 
entice the animals, and then to surround and crush 
them. Corday's life had now but one free moment, 
in which to a number of questions, she made these 
replies : — ' All honest men are my accomplices/ 
c The French have not sufficient strength to be 
republicans/ and, after being mistaken for another 
woman, who endeavoured to obtain an interview with 
the butcher Legendre, she replied : — ' You do not 
consider, that two such deeds could not have been 
done at the same time, and it was necessary to begin 
with Marat/ She received her sentence from the 
judge with the same cheerfulness with which she had 
passed it upon herself a month before. She thanked 
her counsel, the citizen Chauveau, for his courageous 
defence, and said she was not able to reward him, but 
requested him, as a token of her regard, to undertake 
the commission of defraying a small debt for her 
in the prison. In the evening she mounted the funeral 



44 JEAN PAUL. 

car, on which, for two long hours, she wended her 
weary way to the scaffold, hissed and howled at by 
the people for whom she died. She was bitterly 
alone, without a single companion of her heart, or of 
her fate. Quite unknown to her, she met in the Rue 
St. Honore, him who was the one, and soon became 
the other — Adam Lux of Mainz. Oh, why could not 
her gaze, that sought in vain in the frowning crowd for 
a heart like her own, find out and recognise this brother 
of her inner being. Why was this last joy denied her 
on earth ? To see and to know that the companion and 
defender of her heart, and the future martyr of her 
deed, accompanied her to the grave, and then into it, 
and that a noble soul wept for hers, and then followed 
it. He was so near to her and witnessed her last mo- 
ment. But he deserved to see her die. The whole 
spring- world in the republican's heart blossomed anew, 
as he saw the glorious calm upon the youthful form, 
in the red death robe ; the unshaken intrepidity the 
whole long way to the scaffold in her proud and 
piercing eyes, and those gentle, sympathising, even 
tender looks, whose angelic mildness was as bitter to 
him as it was sweet, with which she received the cease- 
less insult heaped on her by the mob. No, he who 
saw such a being live and suffer, could not weep for 
her, he could only imitate her. The heart struck by 
the electric fire of enthusiasm would not bear anything 
earthly near it ; as among the ancients, sites struck 
by lightning were sacred. Calmly and peacefully 
Charlotte Corday mounted the scaffold, where she 
was to lay aside her earthly name, and greeted the 
furies under the guillotine so mildly, that even they 



JEAN PAUL. 45 

were stilled. Let us not linger upon this bloody spot, 
whence so many sighs and sorrows ring and echo 
back. * * An executioner severed her 

youthful locks, bared her shoulders * * and 
laid her blooming life between the gaping shears of 
fate — and it passed into the eternal world. Oh, not 
more than a moment can the earthly pain, the earthly 
death, have darkened her pure spirit, as the moutain- 
top at the poles hides the sun, but for a moment, 
between its setting and its rising. And thou, thou 
noble Mainzer, return with thy fired soul, and speak 
yet again the bold truth, and then come back to the 
scaffold. And let none weep over the lofty spirit, 
but let him offer, like her, what God demands of him, 
whether it be his life or less." 

And here let us pause a moment, as upon the eve 
of a most important epoch in the life of our hero : he 
is now no longer the poor unknown youth, who 
waits the reply of his publishers, to decide whether 
he shall, or shall not, give up his mid-day meal ; he 
is read and admired from the shores of the Baltic to 
those of the Mediterranean ; he is the favoured guest 
of princes, and communities delight to do him honour ; 
more especially is he the object of the regard, ad- 
miration, reverence, and love of German women; 
the beautiful, exalted and gifted, deemed it an 
honour to be introduced to him, and many tra- 
velled hundreds of miles to see him. From the 
Queen of Prussia on her throne, down to the old 
Hausfrau who subsequently kept the cottage on the 
road fromBaireuth to the Hermitage, where he com- 
posed his works, all the women with whom he came 



46 



JEAN PAUL. 



in contact, were irresistibly fascinated, and many of 
their expressions of affectionate reverence are pre- 
served in the journals and letters of that time. Whence 
this fascination, where this charm? "We unhesita- 
tingly answer^ that it lay in his full appreciation of 
the female character, and in the unspotted purity of 
his life and writings. It was an admiration that a 
Byron could not earn, for with all his genius, he was 
a selfish, debauched voluptuary ; it was an enthusiasm 
that goodness and virtue and truth could alone inspire, 
and it is an honour to Gferman women, that they 
admired Jean Paul. The event to which we allude 
was his marriage. The winter of 1800 he spent at 
Berlin, where he was received with the most un- 
bounded enthusiasm. The queen invited him to the 
palace of Sans Souci, and treated him with marked 
attention; whilst a splendid banquet was given to 
him at the York Lodge. He says in a letter written 
at this time, " I have a watch chain of the hair of 
three sisters, and so much hair has been begged of 
me, that were I to make it a traffic, I could live as 
well from the outside of my cranium, as from what is 
inside it ! " It was at this party at the York Lodge, 
that he was introduced to the family of Geheimrath 
(counsellor) Meyer, that consisted of two unmarried 
daughters. Great pains had been bestowed upon their 
education by their father, a man of refined and 
liberal tastes, and his exertions had not been thrown 
away. Richter was accidently placed next to Caro- 
line, the youngest, at table, and was so much charmed 
with her beauty, simplicity, the mental culture which 
she displayed in her conversation, and perhaps above 



JEAN PAUL. 47 

all by tier evident admiration for himself, that he re- 
quested her to present him to her father, and from that 
time, was a constant visitor at the residence of Counsel- 
lor Meyer. Hearing from his daughter Jean Paul's 
wishes with respect to her, the Geheimrath at once ex- 
pressed his entire concurrence and approbation. " My 
child," said he, " if the satisfaction of your father can 
add anything to your happiness, no union could give 
me so much joy." "When we consider that at this time 
Eichter had not a florin but what he received from 
his publisher, it was indeed on the part of Herr Meyer, 
in that worldly age of this worldly world, a most 
unworldly act, thus so cordially to give the hand of 
his daughter to one, who could most truly say, that 
all his property lay under his hat. 

They were therefore betrothed and married, and 
now we shall see Jean Paul in quite a new character. 
After their wedding, which was privately celebrated, 
they spent a few weeks in the society of the venerable 
Herder, at Weimar, and after one or two intermediate 
wanderings finally removed to Baireuth. Jean Paul 
decided to settle here just two years after his marriage ; 
and in the mean time, had been born him a son, and 
he had published the last volume of the Titan and 
the Flegeljahre. Of the former work, suffice it to 
say, that it is the most German and Jean Paulish of 
all his writings, and consequently presents the greatest 
difficulties to the English reader. From it we have 
only taken the two following short pieces ; the one 
a prayer after sickness, that is replete with deep 
religious feeling ; the other, the conclusion of an 



48 



JEAN PAUL. 



extra leaf on forced marriages, in which, after infinite 
humour and much stern satire, he pathetically calls 
upon the mothers of Germany to consider the irrepa- 
rable wrong they are doing their children. 

AFTER SEVERE ILLNESS. 

" And do I again look with blessed eyes into thy 
blooming world, thou all-loving creator, and weep 
for very joy ? Why then did I despair ? Why when 
I sank into darkness, and my beloved ones and the 
spring were far separated from me, was my weak 
heart afraid that there was no opening for me to 
light and life ? For thou wast with me in the dark- 
ness, and thou ledst me out of the vault into the 
spring, and thy children were around me, and the 
bright heaven and all my smiling beloved ones. 
Thou leadest thy children up a high mountain into 
heaven and to thee, and they pass through the 
thunderstorm of life, overclouded, but not struck 
down, and only their eye is wet. But when I come 
to thee, when death again throws his dark cloud 
upon me and draws me away from all loved ones, 
into a deeper abyss, and thou, thou all merciful one, 
again freest me and bearest me into thy spring, so 
much more glorious, even than this ; will then before 
thy judgment seat, my weak heart beat as joyfully 
as it now does, and will my human breast dare to 
breathe in thy celestial spring ? Oh, make me pure 
in this earthly one, and let me here so live, as if I 
were already in thy heaven." 



JEAN PAUL. 49 



CONCLUSION OF THE EXTRA LEAF ON FORCED 
MARRIAGES. 

" Mother of the poor heart that thou wouldst make 
happy by its wretchedness, listen to me. Suppose 
thy daughter at length steel herself to accept the 
proffered misery, hast thou not turned the rich dream 
of her existence to an empty sleep, and taken from it 
the verdant islands of love and the happy days spent 
on them, and the retrospect ever bright, when their 
blooming summits lie low on the horizon ? Mother, if 
this happy time were thine, take it not from thy 
daughter, and if it were cruelly torn from thee, think 
of thy bitterest pang and let it not pass to her. 
Suppose even she make the robber of her soul happy, 
think what she would have been to its darling, and, if 
she deserve nothing better than to give pleasure to a 
jailor to whom she is for ever bound by a prison door. 
But this picture is too bright. Thou hast cast a dark 
shadow on the time when man basks in youth's first 
morning sun. Oh, rather let all the other of life's 
seasons be sad, they are all so like one another ; the 
second, the third, the fourth ; but at the sunrise of 
life, let it not rain, do not darken this never return- 
ing time. But if thou sacrifice not only joys, a 
happy marriage and a whole future race, but the 
being itself whom thou compellest to thy plans and 
commands, who can console thee, who can justify 
thee? Who can dry thy tears, if the best of 
daughters, for it is she who will obey, speak not but 
die, as the monks of La Trappe watched the burning 



50 JEAN PAUL. 

of their cloister, without any breaking his vow of 
silence. If she, dying with a seared heart, cannot 
longer hide from thee, that in the very spring time of 
her young life, she has borne about with her the chills 
and sorrows of winter; thou wilt not be able to 
console her, because thou hast destroyed her, and thy 
conscience will too justly call thee a child murderer ? 
When at length the worn out victim expires under 
thy tears, and the young being so sad and early, so 
weary, yet longing for life, forgiving, yet complain- 
ing, sinks with longing and heart-rending looks 
into the bottomless river of death: Oh, guilty 
mother on the bank, thou that hast pushed her in, 
who shall console thee ? But to the innocent I would 
cry out, and pointing to the sad death-scene, would 
earnestly ask, shall thy daughter also thus miserably 
perish ? " 

The Flegeljahre was received with universal enthu- 
siasm ; from it we subjoin a few short pieces con- 
taining ideas of singular beauty. 

THE REFLECTION OF VESUVIUS IN THE SEA. 

" Look how the flames leap beneath us, fiery streams 
surround the mountain in the deep, and devour the 
gardens and vineyards. Yet we glide securely over 
the flames, and our image smiles back out of the 
burning wave. Thus spoke the sailor, and gazed 
thoughtfully on the burning mountain. But I said : 
Thus the muse bears in its eternal mirror the heavy 
sorrow of the world, and even the unhappy look 
therein and are comforted." 



JEAN PAUL. 51 

CHILDREN. 

" Ye little ones keep near to God ; the smallest 
world is nearest to the sun." 

DEATH UNDER THE EARTHQUAKE. 

" The youth stood near his slumbering beloved in a 
myrtle grove ; the air around her slept, the earth 
was still, the birds were silent, and the very zephyr 
slumbered in the roses in her hair and disturbed not 
a lock. But the sea rose suddenly and its waves came 
to shore in huge living mountains. ' Aphrodite,' 
prayed the youth, ' thou art near, thy sea rocks itself 
tempestuously, hear my prayer, lofty goddess, and 
unite the lover with his beloved/ The ground coiled 
round his feet, an invisible net, the myrtles bowed 
towards him, and the earth thundered, and her gates 
flew open, and below in Elysium, the beloved one 
awoke, and by her side stood the happy youth, for 
the goddess had heard his prayer." 

THE NEAREST SUN. 

" Beyond the suns, are suns in the infinite ether ; 
their distant ray has for thousands of years been 
winging its way to our little earth, and has not yet 
arrived. Oh, thou great loving God, scarcely has 
man's spirit opened his little e}^e, before thy beams 
enter, thou sun of suns and of souls." 

THE DEATH OF A BEGGAR. 

" An aged beggar once slept by the side of another 
poor man, and he groaned in his sleep. Then the 
other called to him, , to awake him out of a troubled 



52 JEAN PAUL. 

dream, lest even the night should oppress his weary 
bosom. The beggar did not wake, but a light passed 
along the straw, and his companion looked at him 
more closely and saw that he was dead. God had 
awaked him out of a longer dream." 

THE OLD. 

" Yes, they are long shadows, and their evening 
sun lies cold upon the earth, but they all point to 
the morning." 

THE KEY OF THE COFFIN. 

" ' Oh, thou lovely, much loved child, so strongly 
fastened in thy last dark dwelling place, I will 
always keep the key of thy prison house, and it shall 
never, never be opened. ' Thus spake the bereaved 
mother, but her daughter flew past her, blooming 
and glorious heavenwards and cried, ' Mother, throw 
away the key ; I am above, not below/ " 

THOUGHT ON A WATERFALL. 

" Above the stormy waterfall hovers the rainbow ; 
thus the streams of time rush and tear along, but 
God stands in heaven, and above the surging wave 
rests the bow of his peace." 

In Caroline, Eichter found every quality of mind 
and heart that he had wished for in a wife, and when 
death, twenty years afterwards, came to call away 
the old man from his labours and honours, he found 
them even more fervently attached to one another, 
than when they were first betrothed. 



JEAN PAUL. 53 

The Flegeljahre had been published scarcely a year, 
when the Introduction to the Aesthetics appeared, 
and this was soon afterwards followed by " Levana," 
a work on education, in which subject, as we have 
already mentioned, Kichter was deeply interested. 
Like most great men, he was fond of children and 
never wearied of their company; indeed he filled 
large volumes of manuscript with their sayings and 
doings. His next two works, " Dr. Katzenberger's 
Bath-journey" and " Attila Schmelze's Circular 
Letter" were purely humorous, and were intended 
to assist in raising a barrier to the undue influx 
and ascendancy of French literature, which at this 
period was much dreaded by all true Germans. 
Here then in Baireuth, the good man lived and 
wrote, and so even was the tenor of his life, that 
there was little to mark the flight of time, but the 
appearance of new books one by one, and the growth 
and improvement of his three children, a son and 
two daughters. In the summer he made short 
journeys, but he tells his wife that the part of them 
that gave him most pleasure, was his return to her. 
In the morning he might often be seen with his 
poodle by his side and stout staff in his hand, 
walking towards the Hermitage, in the immediate 
vicinity of which he rented a little room, where, 
uninterrupted by domestic bustle, he could zealously 
prosecute his writings. Of animals he was ex- 
cessively fond, and was very successful in taming 
them. His eldest daughter gives a graphic picture 
of the home of the poet in this little city, " When 
we were very small, we lived in a two story house ; 
my father worked above in the attic. We crept on 



54 JEAN PAUL. 

our hands and feet up the stairs, and hammered at the 
trap door, until our father raised it, and after our 
admission closed it again, then he took from an old 
chest a broken drum and fife, with which we made 
noisy music while he continued writing. The father 
was kind to every one, he could not bear to witness 
the slightest pain, even in the lowest animal. In 
the twilight he told us stories, or spake of God and 
other worlds ; or he would tell us of our grandfather, 
and other glorious things. We ran to gain the 
wager, the seat nearest to him on the sofa. The 
old money box, hooped with iron, with a hole in the 
cover that two mice might conveniently pass through, 
was the stepping stone by which we in our haste, 
climbed over the arm of the sofa ; for in front it was 
difficult to squeeze through, between the table and 
the repertory for letters. We all three crowded on to 
the sofa, by his side,- above at his head lay the sleep- 
ing dog. When at length we had pressed our limbs 
into the most inconvenient postures, the story began/' 
And here it may not be unsuitable to introduce the 
description given by William Muller of a visit paid 
to the old Frau Eollwenzeln, who kept the little 
hostel, where Bichter wrote. "A shady chestnut 
avenue leads from Baireuth to the Hermitage. 
About half way, where it forms a sharp angle, and 
turns suddenly to the left, we stopped before a little 
time-worn inn, at the door of which stood an old and 
rather stout little woman, with an open and in- 
telligent countenance. She wore a costume half 
town, half village, and received and welcomed us 
more like neighbours or dear friends, than utter 
strangers. Good old woman, what dost thou discern 



JEAN PAUL. 55 

in us, to make thee pardon our intrusion, which has 
for its object neither wine nor beer ? Thou didst 
not ask us to eat or drink, but mysteriously led us 
up a narrow staircase, threw open a little door- way, 
and said with tears in thine eyes, but with a look of 
conscious pride, ' That is the room ; here Jean Paul 
has daily sat and written for twenty years, here at 
this table, he has worked hard, Oh he has worked 
himself to death. I have often said to him, Herr 
Legations-rath, you are working yourself to death, 
spare yourself, you can't last long like this. Some- 
times at two, the dinner hour, I knocked at the 
door and inquired, Herr Legations-rath will you be 
pleased to dine ? There he sat, with great thought- 
ful eyes and gazed at me for a while, before he could 
collect himself, ' Oh, good Rollwenzeln/ he then said, 
" but another hour." And when that was expired, 
I came again, but still he would not listen, and when 
he at last rose and came down the stairs, he swayed 
to and fro, and I went before him, lest he should 
fall. Oh, sir, some who did not know him, said he 
drank too much, but this was not the case, more 
than a bottle of Eoussillon during the day, and some- 
times a little beer in the evening, he has never had in 
my house, except perhaps on a festival, when he was 
here with a few good friends. At such seasons, no one 
could make things so comfortable as the old Eollwen- 
zeln, and he thought a great deal of me ; but then I 
tended him like a lord ; indeed had he been my king, 
father, husband, and son, I could not have loved or ad- 
mired him more. Ah, he was a man, and though as he 
wished, I have not read his writings, yet I have always 
been as pleased, when I heard of their being read and 

d 2 



56 JEAN PAUL. 

admired far and wide, as if I had myself assisted him 
with. them. But rightly to estimate the Herr Lega- 
tions-rath, you should hear the strangers who come 
here. Now in Baireuth, they don't know his value, 
but in Berlin, there, they celebrated his birthday, in 
a splendid hall, full of great and learned men and 
even drank my health — he told me so himself. He 
even promised me, that in his next new book, I 
should appear. Oh, had he lived, I would not have 
troubled about this honour. ' The Eollwenzeln here 
interrupted our silent meditations, and called us back 
into the little room. ' Alas, when I only think how 
much the Herr Legations-rath has written on this 
very spot, and to think when he should have ended ; 
he often told me he had fifty years more to write, 
when I entreated him to spare himself and not to let 
the dinner get cold. No, no such man will again be 
born. He was not like the men of this world. I have 
often thought it over, and once I said to him, ' Herr 
Legations-rath, do not laugh at the old Eollwen- 
zeln. You are to me as a comet full of light, and 
we know not whence it comes, nor where it dwells. 
Another time, his birthday, I thought to myself, 
Eollwenzeln, thou must do something for the Herr 
Legations-rath. So I had written on a fine large 
leaf of paper, ' On this day he saw the light and 
was light.' Now as he sat to table, there lay on 
his plate many poems and good wishes, both written 
and printed. As he turned them over and came to 
mine, his whole face beamed with pleasure, and he 
gave me his hand, saying, ' That is from my good 
Eollwenzeln.' A flower charmed him, or a bird, 
and his table was never without flowers, and I always 



JEAN PAUL. 57 

put one in his button hole. It is about a year since 
he stayed away and did not come again. I went 
into the town to see him a few weeks before his 
death, and having seated myself by his bedside, 
he asked me ' how I did ?' ' Badly/ I replied, 
' badly till you again honour me/ But I knew well 
that he would never come again, and when I learned 
that his canary birds were dead, I thought that he 
would soon follow. The poodle outlived him but a 
very short time ; I saw the little animal not long since, 
I scarcely knew it. God, he is now with thee. They 
gave him a funeral like a Margrave, with torches and 
carriages, and such a procession, there is no describ- 
ing it. I had gone on before into the * God's acre,' 
(grave yard) and as I stood all alone, beside the 
grave, I thought to myself ' And thou must go down 
there, Jean Paul/ No, I thought, that is not Jean 
Paul. And as the coffin stood before me, I thought 
so again. i And dost thou lie there, Jean Paul ?' 
' No, it is not Jean Paul/ There was a funeral ser- 
mon, and they put a chair for me close to the grave, 
and when all was over, the family and Herr Otto, and 
many other gentlemen, pressed my hand/ Tears choked 
the voice of the good old woman, and we pressed her 
hand like the bereaved ones at the grave. What is pos- 
terity's applause, or the loud eulogium of the great on 
the master mind, compared with thy silent adoration ! 
May thy humble dwelling be a monument to him, 
thy house remain unaltered, the room the same, but 
let it be covered by an arch of triumph, and the 
arch be encircled with flowers, a bow of heavenly 
blessing." 

But in the midst of his peaceful retirement, the 



X 



58 JEAN PAUL. 

great heart of Jean Paul mourned for bleeding Ger- 
many and for suffering humanity. It was the time 
when the insatiable ambition of an unprincipled 
despot caused all the nations of Europe to pour out 
their blood like water. Patiently and prayerfully he 
watched through the long night of Germany's afflic- 
tion and degradation, confident that the morning 
must dawn, and manfully he worked to excite and 
cherish the patriotic love of fatherland, which was 
eventually to drive Napoleon back over the Ehine. 
He contributed largely to the serials of the day, and 
subsequently collected his contributions and published 
them as " Twilight Thoughts," " Dawnings for Ger- 
many," "Autumn Flowers," &c. In these writings, 
he endeavoured to prepare mens' minds for the great 
struggle for liberty, which with the prophetic eye of 
genius, he saw approaching ; and when that struggle 
came, and when it was over, and Germany was again 
nationally free, he tried to heal his country's wounds 
and to console the bereaved ones. He thus writes, 
when there was scarcely a household in all Germany, 
from the King's palace to the lowliest peasant's cot, 
that had not lost a near relative in the bloody wars 
with France. 

ON THE DEATH OF THE YOUNG. 

"Is it not then bright and beautiful to die at such 
an age in these spring pasture fields ? I blame not 
here the grief of the bereaved parents, whose worn- 
out ideals fade for a second time, with the decline of 
their sons and daughters, and who twice grow old, for 
their offspring, their second youth, dies before them. I 
blame not a single tear, with which they lament their 



JEAN PAUL. 59 

spring blossoms blighted and without promise of 
autumnal fruit. I will in no wise condemn the 
mourning of affection, least of all that of parents ; I 
will not even say, true as it is, you grieve over 
the fading of the youthful blossom, as over some- 
thing new, and consider not that since the creation, 
each year, a spring has died. I ask you only, is 
it not better that death, rather .than life, should 
wither the roses in their cheeks? Is it not well 
to die at such an age, when the youth and the 
maiden fly from a world of ideals into a brighter 
world of ideals, when they bear with them only the 
bright morning dreams and fresh morning hours of 
the first life, and where a milder sun rises over them, 
than the dull, heavy, sultry one of earth's day of toil, 
where they, exchanging a passing for an everlasting 
youth, need no time to recover from a long and 
weary life, and death's angel bursts asunder the rocks 
that prevent us rising out of the cold, gloomy, intri- 
cate catacombs of life. And is not this the happiest of 
deaths ? I answer, no ! for in life's spring time, 
there is yet a nobler, that of the youth on the battle- 
field. Oh, ye thousands of mothers, sisters, and 
lovers, whose tears gush forth anew at these words, 
because the tears of the loving flow longer than the 
blood of the beloved, because yon cannot forget the 
noble, fiery, innocent young hearts, that no longer 
beat upon your breast, but are lying unknown and 
undistinguishable by the side of other dead hearts, 
in one great grave, check not those tears ! but when 
your eyes are dry, follow with a brighter and a 
clearer gaze the course of the warriors as they sank, 
or much rather are arisen. Father, mother, behold 



60 JEAN PAUL. 

thy son before his fall. Not yet palsied by the prison 
fever of life, he parts from you with a joyous farewell. 
Full of hope and power, without the weary sadness of 
the dying, he plunges into the fiery battle-death. 
Borne on by lofty aspirations and supported and 
inspired by the feeling of honor ; in his eye the foe, 
in his heart the fatherland. Falling foes, falling 
friends, inflame his soul, and the rushing cataracts of 
death cover a trampled world with gloom and with 
splendour, and with a rainbow. All that is great in 
man stands forth boldly, and almost divine in his 
bosom, as in a hall of the Gods : Duty, Fatherland, 
Freedom, Glory. Now comes from the earth his last 
wound ; can he feel that which takes away all feel- 
ing ? No ! between his death and his immortality, no 
pain can come, and his last joyful thought is to have 
died for the fatherland. Then he goes crowned as 
conqueror, into the broad land of peace. There he 
will not look back to earth for its reward ; his reward 
he carries with him, but you share it ; you know that 
no striving after good is altogether fruitless, or with- 
out benefit to mankind, and you may hope that from 
the ashes of the dead on the battle altar, will rise the 
phoenix of the holiest ; and that the skeletons of the 
warriors, lying in unknown graves, are the anchors 
that, unseen, uphold the vessel of the State. Parents, 
will you again shed tears over your sons ? Weep on, 
but let them be only tears of joy, for man's power, 
for the pure ardour of youth, for his scorn of death, 
as of life, yes, for your own human heart, that would 
rather bear the agony of those tears, than be without 
the joys of that self- conquest. Yes, be even proud, ye 
parents ; you too have striven, for you too have made 



JEAN PAUL. 61 

a sacrifice : in the colder season of life you have 
given up a heart that you loved, even more than 
your own, and have ventured it for the great heart of 
the fatherland, and, as your child's remained and 
your's broke, you only wished and wept, but repented 
not your offering — and with your wound, your offering 
lives." 

From these miscellaneous writings we select the 
following pieces : — 

" Too much fortune or too much misery drives both 
men and nations to immorality ; it is only in the 
extremes of heat and cold, that the pond fishes hide 
themselves in the mud." 



" Tyrant, thou seest the sun of liberty sink in a sea 
of tears and of blood, that so lately shed its beams 
over the world ; but thy hopes are vain. The mate- 
rial sun too, sinks amid blood-red threatening clouds, 
into the ocean, but in the morning it rises unextin- 
guished, and day again dawns." 

"Our body sinks into the grave, and in the lapse of 
time, the very epitaph on the gravestone wears away. 
What then remains ? That for which both were 
formed, the soul." 

" Youth weeps, so also does old age, but the one is 
the morning, the other, the evening dew. Thus the 
youth praised the tears of young eyes. But when the 
hot meridian sun had dried up the morning dew, and 
scorched the flowers, and the youth was become an 
old man, he said, it is true that the evening dew 

d3 



62 



JEAN PAUL. 



lies cold and dark, throughout the long night, but 
then the sun comes and it glistens again." 



" The world was moved and troubled, everywhere 
was sorrow on the blooming earth ; death- clouds of 
black poisonous incense rose with its offerings to 
heaven ; man struggled fiercely with man, and both 
bled. But in the- midst of the tumult there was a 
region of peace ; the lark soared high in the blue sky, 
the nightingale thrilled forth its rapturous melody, 
and other songsters enlivened the grove with their 
lays, or warmed their naked young against their 
feathered bosoms. Poets, you too sing ; be like the 
birds, and always inhabit the pure calm heights." 



" Many flowers open to the sun, but one follows it 
constantly. My heart, be thou the sunflower, not 
only open to Gfod, but obey him also." 

THE FAR-SEEING UNBELIEVERS. 

" We have armed our eyes with the telescope and 
have examined the heavens, and found them empty 
and void, and immensity is lonely and waste. Oh ! you 
foolish ones, your telescope is turned upside down." 

THE GLORY OF GENIUS. 

" Gift of genius, thou art like the dew that falls 
from heaven under the evening star ; unseen and dark, 
it strengthens the flower through the long night, but 
when the morning dawns and it glistens brighter than 
the flowers, the sun comes and takes it away. Gift of 
genius, thou art like the dew. Hidden in the silent 
breast, thou, pure and cool, refreshest it a long time, 



JEAN PAUL. 63 

but when thou throwest bright hues and splendor on 
the world around, thou oftentimes soon disappearest 
and leavest a weary heart behind." 



Written the last day of the year, 1807, when was 
fought the disastrous battle of Jena, and Germany's 
hopes were for the time crushed* 

" Strange year ! Hast thou then had the green 
trees and nightingales and the whole short spring of 
earth ? Thou standest silent and ashamed, but yet 
thou hast brought them, but we have not been able 
to see them through our tears. 

" Morning of the new year dawn quickly upon us, 
and as on another morning, may the rainbow of peace 
rise over the retiring flood. And may the beau- 
teous star of love, that according to the calendar 
governs the year, not sink, as Hesperus, that pre- 
cedes the night, but as morning star that heralds the 
dawn ; and may love be the queen of the year." 



" The more the love of God and of our fellow man 
abounds, the less self-love is there ; the quicker a 
planet revolves round the sun, the slower it turns 
round itself." 

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SCIENTIFIC AND POETIC 
ILLUSION. 

" If the philosopher deceive thee, he gives thee a 
vapour of earth, that dissolves itself in rain ; if the 
poet deceive thee, he gives thee a nebula of heaven 
that resolves itself into suns." 



64 JEAN PAUL. 



THE BUTTERFLY IN • THE CHURCH. 

" Let him fly on, whether it be in the little church 
house, or in the great temple of the universe, for he 
too preaches." 

TO PHILOSOPHERS. 

" Which is the greater ? He who raising himself 
above the stormy times, looks down upon them calmly 
from his elevation, or he who leaving his native 
heights, boldly plunges into the fierce battle 
struggle? It is sublime when the eagle soars 
through the thunderstorm into the cheerful heaven 
beyond, but it is more sublime, when he hovering in 
the pure blue, plunges through the raging storm on 
to the rocky crag, where rest his unprotected and 
trembling young. " 

THE CHILD WITH THE CRUTCH. 

" Joyfully the child hops round on his crutch ; and 
sadly the old man drags himself along on his. What 
makes the difference between the two children ? 
Hope and memory. " 

THE SUN OF SCIENCE. 

" What influence does this sun exert over the cold 
men of fashion and of the world ? The same that 
the material sun effects on the icebergs ; it can make 
them shine like burnished gold, but cannot melt them, 
and they float down into the seas of warmer climes." 

WE CHILDREN. 

" A child was carrying a branch covered with flowers, 



JEAN PAUL. 65 

and wished to plant it in the earth, that the sweet 
blossoms might ripen to sweeter fruit. Suddenly 
there settled upon it a swarm of young bees, and the 
terrified child threw it from him, bitterly deploring 
the fruit he had promised himself. Thus we children 
often treat providence." 

PRINCES AND PEOPLES. 

"When princes weep, peoples bleed : if the mountain 
tops are enshrouded in mist, it rains in the valley. 
Now at last, thank God, the German throne heights 
are cloudless, and stand out fair and clear, as pointers 
of a bright future to their common fatherland. But 
oh, princes, consider that eyes are easier to dry than 
wounds, and the mountain tops than the valley." 

HERDER AND SCHILLER. 

" Both in youth intended to become surgeons, but 
destiny said, 'No, there are deeper wounds than 
those of the body ; heal the deeper ones/ and they 
both wrote." 

THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 

" Man sees the spinning wheel of destiny, but not 
the thread ; therefore, says he, behold the eternal 
empty round of the universe." 

THE REPEATED PROMISE OF AMENDMENT. 

" Heinrich was a youth of fifteen summers, full of 
good resolutions that he seldom kept, and faults that 
he daily repented. He loved his father and teacher 
much, but his amusements more ; for either of these 
he would have willingly offered his life, but would 



66 JEAN PAUL. 

not bend his will. From this cause the Count, his 
father, dreaded the time when Heinrich would leave 
home for college and his travels, where the crooked 
paths of vice become more flowery and precipitous, 
and no father's arm can restrain, no father's voice 
call back. He feared lest he should then sink from 
weakness to weakness, and return with a soul sullied 
and polluted ; with all its purity and beauty gone, 
and having lost even that reflection of virtue, re- 
pentance. The Count was tender, mild and pious, 
but over indulgent. The vault where rested his 
spouse, stood as it were under his every footstep and 
underlaid each bed, from which he would fain have 
gathered flowers. It was his birthday, and perhaps 
from this reason he was ill, for the wounded breast 
could not bear a day, when the heart beat stronger 
against it. As he grew weaker and weaker, his 
agonised son went into the little grave-yard, where 
stood the tomb of his mother, and one as yet un- 
tenanted, which his father in his sorrow had erected 
for himself. Here upon his mother's grave, Heinrich 
solemnly vowed to wage war with his passions and 
follies. The birthday of his father seemed to say to 
him, 'The frail clay that retains thy father and 
separates him from the dust of thy mother, will soon 
crumble away, perhaps in a very few days, and he 
will go grieved and hopeless to thy mother, and he 
will not be able to tell her that thou art reformed.' 
And he wept aloud, but oh, unhappy Heinrich, what 
avail are thy sorrow and tears, without thy amend- 
ment. After a short time the Count partially re- 
covered, and in the overflow of joyful emotion and 
hope, he pressed the repentant boy to his fevered 



JEAN PAUL. 67 

breast. Heinrich was excited with, joy at his father's 
recovery and embrace ; his tutor, who endeavoured 
by proportioned severity to make up for the father's 
leniency, tried to set bounds to his intemperate plea- 
sure. Heinrich was disobedient, and when the tutor 
reiterated his commands, he rebelled and wounded the 
feelings of his stern friend deeply. This disturbance 
with his teacher struck the already weary and 
stricken heart of the hoping father, like a poisoned 
dart, and he succumbed to the wound and had to 
take again to his sick bed. Thoughtlessly man 
strews around him the flaming coals of his sins, and 
often only when lying in bis grave, do the scattered 
sparks burst forth into flames, whose smoke forms a 
column of shame over bis tomb, that rests for ever 
upon it. Heinrich, when all hopes of recovery were 
over, could not look upon the shattered form of his 
father, without remorse. Silently on his knees like 
an eye-bound malefactor, he awaited in the next 
room, the future and the fearful words * he is dead V 
At length, he went in to the dying man to take a 
last farewell and receive his forgiveness ; but the 
father though he gave his love, withheld his confi- 
dence, saying, ' My son, amend, but do not promise 
it.' As Heinrich lay in the ante -chamber, over- 
whelmed with grief and shame, he heard his aged 
tutor blessing his father, who had also been his pupil, 
as if already the shades of the last night were 
gathering round the sick man's life. ' Slumber 
softly/ said he, ' thou virtuous man, thou faithful 
scholar ; all the good resolutions that thou hast kept, all 
thy victories over self, all thy good deeds, will now 
appear as crimson evening clouds in the twilight 



68 JEAN PAUL. 

of thy setting sun. Hope on in thy Heinrich and 
trust that he may still reform/ The sick man 
could not shake off his overwhelming faintness, his 
wandering senses mistook the voice of the tutor for 
that of his son, and he stammered out, i Heinrich, 
I cannot see thee, but I hear thee ; lay thy hand upon 
my heart and swear that thou will amend.' Heinrich 
sprang into the room, bnt the tutor putting his hand 
on the dying man's breast, said gently, ' I will 
swear in thy name.' But as he did so, he felt that 
the heart had ceased its motion and was resting from 
the long labour of life, ' Fly, unhappy one ' he cried, 
' he has died without hope.' Heinrich fled out of 
the castle, after promising his teacher to return. 
Tottering, and weeping aloud, he sought the grave- 
yard, where the tombs like pale skeletons rose amid 
the green foliage. He had not the courage to touch 
the empty future resting place of His father ; but he 
leaned against the second column, where lay a heart 
that had not perished through his guilt, his mother's. 
— Silent, gloomy, and oppressed, he bore his sorrow 
further ; everywhere he met that which reminded 
him of his loss and of his guilt. The thought of his 
undutiful conduct haunted and pursued him. After 
five gloomy days full of remorse and pain, Heinrich 
resolved to return to the friend of his father, and 
console him by the first fruits of his amendment. At 
night, he entered timidly the house of mourning. 
As he passed through the grave-yard, the white 
pyramid over his father's tomb stood awe-inspiring 
to his soul among the living green of the foliage, as 
the smoke cloud of a conflagration floats in the pure 
blue ether of heaven. He leaned his head against 



JEAN PAUL. 69 

the cold hard column and could only weep, discon- 
solate and speechless. Here he stood forsaken. JNo 
soft voice whispered ' Thou hast been sufficiently 
punished/ The trees rustled as in rage, and the 
darkness seemed an abyss ; his loss was irreparable, 
and he felt it. But now through his tears he noticed 
a silver star in the sky, that mild as the eye of an 
immortal spirit, shone down upon him through the 
trees. A softer sorrow took possession of his breast ; 
he thought of the promise of amendment, that death 
alone had prevented, and he sank slowly upon his knees, 
and gazing up to the stars above him, said, ' Oh, 
father, father, (and grief choked his voice) here lies 
thy unhappy child on thy grave, and he swears to 
thee ; yes, pure righteous spirit, I will alter — accept 
me again. Oh, couldst thou but give me a sign that 
thou hadst answered my request.' The leaves rustled 
near him, slowly a form pushed aside the branches 
and said, 1 1 have heard thee, I hope again/ It was 
his father — the transition state between death and 
sleep, the sister of death, a trance, had like a 
wholesome, though heavy slumber, again given 
him life. Thou excellent father, had death borne 
thee into the glories of the second world, thou couldst 
not have experienced more joy and rapture., than at 
this moment, when thy erring son sank repentant 
on thy bosom, and fulfilled the most cherished hope 
of thy heart. 

" Before the curtain falls on this short scene, I 
would ask you young men — Have you parents to 
whom you have not yet given this pledge ? If so, I 
would remind you, ere it be too late, that one day, a 
time will come, when you will be comfortless, and 



70 JEAN PAUL. 

in bitterness of soul exclaim, alas, they loved me 
better than all besides, but I let them die without 
hope, and I was their last grief." 

The biography of Bichter from the time he set- 
tled at Baireuth is almost too simple for a detailed 
account. He was an excellent husband and father, 
and a constant friend. Numerous letters were conti- 
nually addressed to him from all parts of Germany, 
asking advice or assistance, to which he always replied. 
Young authors came to him for a good word, and 
among those whom he first introduced to fame, may 
be mentioned Wagner and Kanne. 

But here we must introduce a tragic story,— it is 
one that no writer of fiction would ever be excused 
for detailing as such, it is Werther like, but it sur- 
passes "Werther. A young girl, the daughter of a 
victim of the reign of terror, had begun to read the 
works of Jean Paul in her tenth y^ar, So delighted, 
so enchanted was she with him, seeing him as she 
did only through the medium of his writings, that 
this young creature came to the conclusion, that she 
could not be happy, except in his society. She ac- 
cordingly wrote to Bichter, begging that he would for 
the future, consider her as his daughter. His answers 
were kind and gentle, and full of advice, he even, at 
her especial request, got his wife to cut a lock from 
his now but scantily covered head, sent it to her, and 
always signed himself " Thy Father." But this was 
not enough for the impassioned girl; her ideal of 
him was ever present with her, and the desire to see 
him became so intense, a desire that she felt she 
could not rightly gratify, that she at length con- 
ceived, child as she was, that her only refuge was 



JEAN PAUL. 71 

death. At this time, she was living with her 
mother and sister, and as their happiness greatly 
depended upon her, she resolved for their sakes to 
delay the prosecution of her fearful project. The 
mother died and the sister married, and now believing 
that the last tie that bound her to earth was severed, 
and that in another world she would be able to meet 
him whom she loved so ardently, she carried her fright- 
ful scheme into execution, after penning the follow- 
ing letter to Eichter : "Do not be angry, dearest 
father, at receiving these lines from your unfortu- 
nate Maria. My mother has been two months dead, 
and she will consent that I shall now follow her. She 
wished me to take care of my sister, and not to desert 
her in these terrible war times — these are now over. 
All I could, I have done ; her happiness is secure, 
and I now hasten to quit a world where mine has so 
unaccountably failed, where my most earnest strivings 
after good have been so entirely in vain, and where, 
since my foolish letters to you, I have passed from 
despair to despair. Ah ! in the great universe, there 
will yet be a place where I can recover my peace and 
be as I wish. I have suffered enough, I long to die ! 
Ah ! you will despise me as long as I live, for you 
will never understand how I have languished to do 
something for you, or for those dear to you. But do 
not despise me so much, as not to let your children, 
of whom I cannot think without tears, they are so 
happy, accept a little present from me. Tell them 
not whence it comes ; I would willingly be wholly 
forgotten, and unnoticed pass away. No one has 
learned my history from myself, and I have burnt 
all books and journals. Your hair alone was spared, 



72 



JEAN PAUL. 



it is on my neck, and I take it with me. Again, 
never-to-be-forgotten, dearest father ! Farewell ! 
Alas, that it should have been so with me. My un- 
happy spirit will hover round you, till you again 
receive it, and take it with you. Oh, could I but 
give you a sign, or bring you some higher know- 
ledge." 

This dreadful circumstance threw a gloom over 
Eichter' s life, that it took long years to dispel. His 
family was now grown up, and his son Max, a 
youth of great promise, was sent to Munich to school. 
Here he devoted himself with the utmost assiduity to 
his studies, and when removed to the University of 
Heidelberg, distinguished himself much, especially 
as a philologist. His severe mental application 
shattered his constitution, and brought on a melan- 
choly, that assuming the form of religious fanaticism, 
quickly robbed him of youth and health. His parents 
in vain attempted to cheer him. His mental struggles 
brought on a nervous fever, that ended in death. 
Eichter never got over this blow, it went to his heart 
— it was a death-stab to the old man, and left death 
himself little to do. His sight was much weakened 
by excessive weeping, and at length entirely yielded 
to his unremitting literary efforts. 

For many years Eichter had been engaged in the 
composition of a great comic romance, entitled, " The 
Comet. " This work was not completed at the time 
of the death of his son, yet so great was his force of 
character, that he could compose the most humorous 
scenes, while his eyes were red and swollen with 
weeping. A few stray thoughts from this work are 
well worthy of insertion here. 



JEAN PAUL. 



73 



DEATH IN CHILDHOOD. 

" The butterflies die with the setting sun, and live 
not to disport themselves in the morning beams. 
You are happier, you little human butterflies ; you 
sported for awhile at the rising of the sun of life, 
and flew over a bright world full of flowers, and sank 
before the morning dew had disappeared." 

THE RAINBOW OVER WATERLOO. 

" When at last, 'stead of the deadly cannon mouths, 
only the torn limbs smoked, and when to the shout of 
the combatants had succeeded the wail of the wounded, 
and death looked out upon his wide fresh cut harvest 
field, where men and horses lay, some cold and stark, 
and others dying side by side, there appeared in the 
east a rainbow, as if the heavens wished to bind up 
the wounds of the bleeding earth, with a soft lina- 
ment of colours. 

" To the breaking eyes of the wounded it stood as a 
triumphal arch with its flower colours and the blue 
of heaven, the green of earth, and the red of the 
morning ; the conquerors' wreath given by the sky, 
and half hidden by the earth ; the half circle of 
eternity into which the heart escapes, when released 
from its fetters of clay. 

" And as formerly after the deluge, this joy-inspiring 
bow was given as a token of future mercy, it now 
stood as messenger of peace from heaven, after the 
long down-pouring of blood over Europe, to tell 
us that the destruction of fellow men, and the 
ebb and flow of the outpoured brother's blood, should 
now cease. May the celestial harbinger never betoken 
aught else, Oh, ye kings ! " 



74 



JEAN PAUL. 



" If this were but done, and that accomplished, and 
all were gone as I could have wished, I should be in 
the harbour and rest securely, says man, and he does 
run into a harbour, that he, as the sailor, has hewn in 
an iceberg, and he rests there, till his harbour either 
floats or melts away." 

COMPLAINT OF THE BIRD IN THE DARKENED CAGE. 

" How wretched should I be, said the imprisoned 
bird, in my ceaseless night, without the beautiful tunes, 
that sometimes like distant rays penetrate into my 
cage, and brighten my darkest day. But I will impress 
these heavenly melodies upon me, and like the echo, 
practice them, till I am able to console myself with 
them in my darkness. And the little songster learned 
to sing the melodies that were played before it, and 
then the cloth was raised, for it was only to teach, 
that it had been kept in the dark. How often do 
we men and women complain of the beneficent ob- 
scuration of our days ? But only then do we rightly 
complain, when we have thereby learned nothing. 
And is not our whole earthly existence, but a curtain 
to the soul ? Oh, when the curtain is drawn aside, 
may it fly upwards with new melodies ! " 

THE ATHEIST. 

" The denier of a living Gfod, holding converse but 
with himself, when he has once shut out the Highest 
from his view, must stand in a dead universe, im- 
prisoned by a cold, gray, deaf, blind, dumb, iron 
necessity, and verily for him, nothing lives and 
moves, but his own transient existence. Thus stands 



JEAN PAUL. 75 

the wanderer on the ice seas and ice mountains of 
Switzerland. Around him silence reigns supreme. 
Nothing moves as far as eye can reach, save some- 
times when a thin cloud rises upwards, and for a 
moment breaks the immeasurable immovability. 
Yes, if he have both excluded God from his belief, 
and have sunk into misery and sin, his solitude may 
well be compared to that of the convicted incendiary, 
who, chained in his hut, sees the faggots rise higher 
and higher around him, and awaits in utter loneliness, « 
the lighting of the pile, the signal of his doom." 

JOYS AND SORROWS. 

" As we do not remember the extent and number of 
our sorrows, as of our joys, we are too apt to forget 
the fruit that these holly trees have borne. These 
fruits are perhaps more necessary to our head than to 
our heart. To love everything, a joyful existence is 
sufficient; but to see and know all, men, life, and 
still more ourselves, requires sorrow. The spiritual, 
like the material eye, must be daily moistened by 
tears ; to give it elasticity, to soften the light and 
wash away aught that might be detrimental to it. 
"We do not notice that we actually weep the whole 
day long. I speak of the material eye. Yet on 
different minds, sorrows have a different effect. 
Those of a pure, warm spirit are the May frosts that 
harbinger the summer, but those of one, hard, sordid, 
and corrupt, are autumnal chills, that show only the 
approach of winter. 

" Every heavy sorrow seems to us at the time an 
overwhelming crushing load, as the gravestone, tied 
to the neck of the condemned to sink him in the 



76 JEAN PAUL. 

deep; but we do not consider that oftentimes 
afflictions are but the stones attached to the divers, 
so that they may descend into the deep and rise 
again enriched with costly pearls. Joy flies around 
us as a beautiful captivating harmless butterfly — but 
alas, it too often leaves behind it eggs, which grow 
to voracious caterpillars that bite sharply and long, 
till they, in their turn, change to butterflies. 

" No man is so cowardly as to confess that he 
crouches before every grief, and contests and endures 
none. But if thou wilt contest and bear up against 
one, thou must not except any, but must determine 
to rise superior to all, to the greatest, as to the least. 
It were contradictory and absurd to find salves in 
reason or religion, for bee, but not for serpent- stings, 
or to suffer them to cure the sprained foot, but not 
the broken arm. The lives of most men are like 
water, where but one point receives and reflects the 
sunshine, and all around is in the shade, and if 
a cloud pass over this spot, all is obscured. But let 
thy life be like the diamond, that by nature too, only 
beams from one spot, but to which the cuttings of 
art give light surfaces, so that no part is dark. Be 
then, not in one position cheerful, but in all, and 
however providence may see fit to treat thee, let thy 
light continue to shine on." 



Here follows in the original, a sublime dream, 
illustrative of the immensity of space, which we had 
intended to translate, but so admirably has it been 
paraphrased by Mr, De Quincey, that we hesitate 
not to introduce his version. We think, however, he 
has in it, not preserved the grand idea that was 



JEAN PAUL. 77 

evidently prominent in the mind of the writer. In 
Richter's introduction to this composition, he chiefly 
dwells upon the enormous expanse between the 
celestial bodies. And when he is astounded, over- 
whelmed and confounded, by the infinitudes through 
which he passes, and wonders that so vast a portion 
of the universe should be empty and void ; the angel 
touches his eyelids, and immediately he beholds the 
suns and planets as dark bodies traversing a sea of 
light — the spirit world. 

" God called up from dreams a man into the vesti- 
bule of heaven, saying, ' Come thou hither, and 
see the glory of my throne.' And to the servants, 
that stood around his throne, he said, ' Take him, 
and undress him from his robes of flesh, cleanse his 
vision, and put a new breath into his nostrils ; only 
touch not with any change his human heart, the 
heart that weeps and trembles.' 

" It was done, and with a mighty angel for his 
guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage ; 
and from the terraces of heaven, without sound or 
farewell, at once they wheeled away into endless 
space. Sometimes, with the solemn flight of angel 
wing, they fled through zaarahs of darkness, through 
wildernesses of death, that divided the worlds of 
light; sometimes they swept over frontiers that 
were quickening under prophetic motions from Gfod. 
Then from a distance that is counted only in heaven, 
light dawned for a time through a sleepy film ; by 
unutterable pace, the light swept to them ; they 
by unutterable pace, to the light. In a moment, the 
rushing of planets was upon them ; in a moment the 
blazing of suns was around them. Then came 



78 JEAN PAUL. 

eternities of twilight, that reveal but were not re- 
vealed. On the right hand and on the left towered 
mighty constellations, that by self repetitions and 
answers from afar, that by counter positions, built 
up triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose arch- 
ways, horizontal, upright, rested, rose at altitude by 
spans that seemed ghostly, from infinitude. With- 
out measure were the architraves, past number were 
the archways, beyond memory the gates. Within 
were stairs, that scaled the eternities below ; above 
was below, below was above to the man stripped of 
gravitating body ; depth was swallowed up in height 
insurmountable, height was swallowed up in depth 
unfathomable. Suddenly as thus they rode from 
infinite to infinite — suddenly as thus they tilted over 
abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose that systems 
more mysterious, that worlds more billowy, other 
heights and other depths, were coming, were nearing, 
were at hand. Then the man sighed and stopped, 
shuddered, and wept. His overladen heart uttered 
itself in tears, and he said, ' Angel, I will go no 
farther ; for the spirit of man acheth with this infini- 
tude. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let me lie 
down in the grave, and hide me from the persecu- 
tion of the infinite ; for end I see there is none/ 
And from all the listening stars that shone around, 
issued a choral voice, ' The man speaks truly. End 
there is none, that ever yet we heard of ! ' End is 
there none?' the angel solemnly demanded. ' Is 
there indeed no end, and is this the sorrow that kills 
you ?' But no voice answered, that he might answer 
himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious hands 
to the heaven of heavens, saying, ' End is there none, 



JEAN PAUL. 79 

to the universe of God. Lo, also, there is no begin- 

* » j> 

nmg. 

After the death of his son, Bichter continued to labor 
unremittingly with his pen, and the work to which he 
devoted the greatest part of his remaining time and 
strength, was one on the Immortality of the Soul,, 
" Selina." We have before mentioned that his sight 
was failing fast. In 1823, he travelled to Dresden, 
to consult a celebrated optician in that city, and in 
1824, to Nuremberg, with the same object ; but all 
was without avail. He found great difficulty in seeing 
to write, and the manuscript of the " Selina" exhibits 
a sad contrast to the beautiful caligraphy of his earlier 
works. In the autumn of 1825, his physical strength 
rapidly declined, and this weakness proved the imme- 
diate precursor of man's hereditary foe. The last 
words which he forced his erring hand to trace, were 
these, "Life is not flown with the soul, but in it. Its 
material sceptre it now resigns. The spirit world 
which that sceptre governed it dismisses, or rather it 
abandons. Shall this rich, and till now much more 
favoured portion of our being, cease, and only the other 
part remain." Thus the last words of Jean Paul were a 
statement of his conviction that the soul was immortal. 

During his illness, his gentleness and gratitude for 
every little service done him, were remarkably con- 
spicuous. On the 14th of November, a friend brought 
him some flowers, of which he was excessively fond, 
although he could no longer see them. He took them 
in his hand and fell into a soft slumber, from which he 
never more awoke. And the great mind was gone 
in death to solve the mighty problem of his life. 
" Thus Richter. went from earth, great and holy as a 

e2 . 



80 JEAN PAUL. 

poet, greater and holier as a man." Thus died Jean 
Paul, the kind husband, the excellent father, the gifted 
poet, the enlightened patriot, and above all, the good 
man. At night, by the light of torches, his body was 
carried to its last resting place by the side of the much 
loved son. On his coffin, lay the unfinished manu- 
script of the "Selina," the book on imm ortality. A 
long procession followed, and as they gathered round 
the narrow vault, that was to enclose the earthly 
remains of the great author, there arose from the lips of 
the assembled mourners, the triumphant hymn of KLop- 
stock " Auferstehen wirst du," " Thou shalt arise," 
and all felt that this was not the end of Jean Paul. 

Our task is now well nigh accomplished. We have 
briefly sketched the principal incidents in the life of 
Bichter : we have watched the boy in his play, by 
the side of the beautiful Saale ; we have accompanied 
the youth, who with head and heart full to overflowing, 
but with empty purse and threadbare coat, hurried 
along the streets of Leipzig, and have traced his foot- 
steps, as he toiled upwards to competence and fame; we 
have described his marriage and final settlement in the 
little town of Baireuth, where within view of his 
native mountains, he laboured and wrote ; we have 
wept with the old man over the blighted promise of 
his son, and have mournfully followed the bier of the 
aged poet as it was borne at the dead of night through 
the silent streets ; and have even lingered awhile 
at the grave to listen to the solemn strains of the re- 
quiem that pointed to immortality, and to hope beyond 
the tomb. Of his works, we have introduced such 
pieces as seemed to us conspicuous for beauty, power, 
and truth. Yet this little volume would not be com- 



JEAN PAUL. 81 

plete without further notice of his character. In 
person Richter was tall, muscular, and strongly built. 
His countenance was indicative of his mind. On the 
lofty, broad, noble brow, was unmistakeably written 
a profound intellect, whilst in his large lustrous eye, 
there was almost an excess of feeling. The nose was 
regular, and the mouth small and fine. The neck 
was full, giving an idea of power. Of his private 
character we have already spoken at some length ; 
dutiful as a son, faithful and affectionate as a husband, 
and kind and loving as a father, he lived the good 
man, and he died the good man. He has been com- 
pared to Sir "Walter Scott, and in many respects, the 
characters of the two great writers were similar. 
They both had an excessive fondness for animals, an 
ardent love for nature, and warm and feeling hearts. 
But here, to us, the resemblance ceases. Scott is 
remarkable for a graceful flowing style, peculiarly his 
own, whilst Richter is as rough and rugged as his 
native hills. Scott was an aristocrat in everything 
but birth, whilst the political creed of Richter was 
something between that of an ancient republican and 
a modern radical. Of his religion it is difficult to 
speak, and what we do say, we would say diffidently. 
That Richter was essentially a devout man, none 
who have read his works will deny. Even from the 
short extracts we have given, we have seen that 
flinging aside the limitations of space and time, he 
could on the spirit's wing, penetrate beyond the utter- 
most confines of our system, beyond all the visible 
heaven, to find the " Hidden All" of the universe, 
there to cast himself in wonder, love, and adoration, 
before the throne of " his infinite Father." The ten- 



82 JEAN PAUL. 

dency of the age in which he lived, and in which we 
live, is pre-eminently practical, grasping at particular 
facts, it cares little for general principles ; if it can 
get individual, it will not seek out great fundamental 
laws. The philosophy of Bichter was the very 
reverse of that of the age : in seeking general laws, 
he seems to us to have somewhat neglected particulars, 
and whilst feeling an inexpressible yearning for an 
infinite Father, to have disregarded, or thrown aside, 
some of those practices and doctrines of the Christian 
church, which were instituted by its divine founder, 
and which by most of its members are considered 
essential and vital. Nevertheless, in the great strug- 
gle that was being waged between Goethe and 
Schiller, as the leaders of the aesthetic philosophers, 
and Herder and Jacobi, who maintained the supre- 
macy of revelation, even to human reason, Bichter 
hesitated not to give his whole influence in favour 
of the latter, though it cost him no less a price than 
the friendship of his two illustrious opponents. 

Criticism forms but a small part of this little 
work, indeed we feel ourselves utterly incapable of 
reviewing such writings as those of Jean Paul. The 
following is from the pen of one who was evidently 
at home in the subject. "To characterize Jean Paul's 
works would be difficult, after the fullest inspection, 
to describe them to English readers would be next to 
impossible. Whether poetical, philosophical, didactic, 
fantastic, they seem all to be emblems, more or less 
complete, of the singular mind where they originated. 
As a whole, the first perusal of them, more particu- 
larly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive ; and 
neither their meaning, nor their no meaning, is to be 



JEAN PAUL. 83 

discovered without long and sedulous study. They 
are a tropical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities, 
but with the fairest flowers and coolest fountains, now 
over-arching us with high umbrageous gloom, now 
opening in long gorgeous vistas. We wander through 
them, enjoying their wild grandeur ; by degrees our 
half contemptuous wonder at the author passes into 
reverence and love. His face was long hid from us, 
but we see him at length in the firm shape of spiri- 
tual manhood, a vast and most singular nature, but 
vindicating his singular nature, by the force, the 
beauty, and benignity that pervade it. In fine we 
joyfully accept him for what he is, and was meant to 
be. The graces, the polish, the sprightly elegancies, 
which belong to men of lighter make, we cannot look 
for, or demand from him. His movement is essen- 
tially slow and cumbrous, for he advances, not with 
one faculty, but with a whole mind ; with intellect, 
and pathos, and wit, and humour, and imagination, 
moving onwards like a mighty host, motley, pon- 
derous, irregular, irresistible. He is not airy, spark- 
ling and precise, but deep, billowy, and vast. The 
melody of his nature is not expressed in common 
notemarks, or written down by the critical gamut, 
for it is wild and manifold ; its voice is like the voice 
of cataracts, and the sounding of primeval forests. 
To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that under- 
stand it, deep majestic music." The mind of Jean 
Paul, as seen in his writings, may be compared to the 
image seen by Nebuchadnezzar, in prophetic vision, 
" whose brightness was excellent." The fine gold of 
pure and holy sentiment is the head, the silver of a 
boundless and sublime imagination, the breast, the 



84 JEAN PAUL. 

brass and iron of truth and power, the thighs and 
legs, whilst the feet are partly formed of clay. Yes, 
clay did enter into his composition, the clay of a vicious 
style, offensive to most and repulsive to all. Yet spite 
of this imperfection, the grandeur and wonderful 
creative power of his imagination, the richness and 
exuberance of his imagery, the minute truthfulness 
with which he paints every joy and sorrow, every hope 
and aspiration of which the human heart is susceptible, 
the noble persistency of the support he gives to social 
and intellectual liberty, to the cause of truth, and of 
virtue, all proclaim him to be, though not Germany's 
greatest author, yet the phoenix of her modem litera- 
ture. We have already likened his childhood to the 
course of a mountain streamlet, much more may his 
writings, in their full vigour, be compared to the 
broad smooth current of a mighty river, which re- 
flects upon its bosom, not only the varied face of 
nature, mountain, and forest, not only the habitations 
of men, but the billowy cloud world, the pure blue 
ethereal vault beyond, either studded with stars, or 
enlightened by the rays of the king of day. 

Thus in Jean Paul we find not only nature, not 
only man depicted, but ideas sublime, vast, over- 
whelming ; and though somewhat obscured by poetic 
or philosophic clouds, it is not seldom that we get a 
glimpse of the " divine eye " beyond. 

Richter's offerings to the muses are like that of 
Brutus to the oracle. To the casual or superficial 
observer, they are mere alder sticks, rough, knotted 
and gnarled, but he who reads and studies them, will 
assuredly find them inlaid with pure gold. 



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